In 10th grade, we had to write "poems" about our names. I don't remember being given any guidelines. Anyway, this is what I churned out; once upon a time it was in verse form, but I got rid of that because I found it purposeless.
My name is Tamara. How odd it sounds when I say it -three nonsensical syllables carelessly pasted together with cheap school glue, hopelessly nasal and, to my ears, meaningless. "Why Tamara?" I think sometimes, "Why not something nicer, something easier, a Sarah or a Jessica?" But the name has been tattooed on my person, a stigma to follow me to my grave.
My parents were to name me Kimberly. But then, one fateful Sunday afternoon while flipping through the sports page, a name caught my dad's seasoned eye: Tamara. Tamara McKinney. Champion downhill skier. Tall. Proud. Attractive. For both of my parents it was love at first sight; For me, an inescapable twist of fate. My destiny was signed and sealed. I would be a Tamara.
It's hard having a name like mine, one with so many pronunciations. The favorite amongst the substitute teachers is "Ta MEH ra", stressing the second syllable, with an "a" like in "air". Even worse is "Ta MAH ra", ever so humdrum and blah, like slow flat straight well-lit city roads or even the dour lowing of restless cattle, forever the jest of juvenile minds and tongues: ("See you tomorrow, Ta MAH ra...") Sixteen years of this now and it still grates on me. It's a curse, a misfortune, a plague.
So why Tamara? Why not Kimberly, or Kelsey, or Kristin? My answer is this: Because when I look in the mirror I see a Tamara, when I think of myself I think of Tamara, because I have molded myself into the ideal Tamara, because the name owns me as much as I own the name, because it defines me. Each syllable, each meaningless, nasal, humdrum syllable holds, embedded in its core, the fundamentals of me-ness.
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