My Name

            My name is Simon Cross.  One would expect my father’s last name to be Cross, but this is not the case.  My father’s last name is Fecas.  My mother’s last name is Toomer.  My sister’s last name is Cloud.  Let me back up. 

George Robert Fecas and Catherine Anne Toomer decided to get married.  The free spirited Catherine decided she did not want to take her beloved’s last name.  The possibility of a hyphenated name was squashed soon after it was brought up.  Fecas-Toomer sounds like something malignant.  So, post-marriage, Catherine shall remain Catherine Anne Toomer and George (Bob as he is commonly called) shall remain George Robert Fecas. 

After a few years of passionate lovemaking and furious argument (or is it furious lovemaking and passionate argument…) my sister and I came into the world.  Instead of giving the patriarch’s last name or the first name of a distant relative, Bob and Catherine decide to start something new for the new.  After a number of discussions and comic strip light bulbs, the first child was given the name Mary Cloud.  Just under two years later, the second was named Simon Cross.  Catherine and Bob came from religious ways and those are reflected in the names of the children.  Every Simon in the Bible has been cited as an influence in the picking of my name, perhaps the most obvious being the one that assisted Jesus on his way to Golgotha.  Rumor has it that my mother wanted to name me Socrates, after the obvious, or Yeshua, a Hebrew spelling for Jesus.  But they landed on Simon Cross.  Simon Cross period.  I am the reason middle initials are not required on a W-4. 

This is my baseline for family names.  I have never met someone with a story like mine.  I recognize my situation as separate from the norm, yet it feels like home.  And when the time comes, I can already hear myself telling my beloved, “Why don’t we just give her a new last name?”