I’d Like to Buy a Vowel

There is not much more awakening than learning to write your name for the first time.  When the word that you’ve heard over and over again…be it with the joy of longing grandparent or with the more persuasive instance of a parent…becomes the written word with letters that seem to belong just to you.  Well, at least for the first few years of scrawled name writing.  Such was the case with me and the letters formed my name.

My mother, being one to keep the older generation content, chose mine as a namesake to both grandmothers.  So…my first name, holding close to our Danish heritage, was both unique and quite frequently mispronounced.  My middle name is as neutral as it gets…but I rarely use it.  So when my chubby five year old fingers wrapped around the Crayola, I chose to label everything with my four letters of my first name….the first and the last being the most common of vowels…three-legged E.

I still remember the how it felt to write E over and over again.  And no matter how often I stared at those three lines reaching across the horizon, I could only think one thing.  “They are so far away from one another.  They must be terribly lonely.”  I would justify in my head that they could stand on their own…like tree branches.  But then I would realize the branches had leaves and the E lines had no one.  So as any kindergartner would do, I solved the problem ingeniously.  Between the three lines, I added heaps of extra lines, so my E’s became more of a one-sided fir tree or perhaps a very upright spider.  It seemed to make sense.  And it resolved my worry for those three lonely lines.

Clearly, Ms. Anderson, my endearing hippie chick teacher, saw it the way I did.  Because every snowman, heart, and clover my parents have saved from my prime educating years have the same E…both in the beginning and end of my proud name.  And though all I can recall from Ms. Anderson is her denim bell bottoms and her daisy headband, she knew enough to leave the lines…that the E needed them, and maybe I did too.

Sometime around those long-legged E years…my mother’s El Camino car radio would play a song repetitively.  Or maybe we had the eight track.  The artist’s name escapes me…but the chorus resonates, as those one-hit wonders can only do.  It was something about people…people who need people…are the luckiest people in the world. Some lyricist in the seventies was courageous enough to admit that it was ok not to stand alone.  That maybe the E wishes it could be like the O or A…connected and unified.  That maybe E (and sometimes I) needed some company.

And though I am sure the E would have been just fine in it’s original state, I am guessing there was something soothing that little vowel gained from its’ extra lines in those precious kinder years.  Even now, when I print my name, I try and make sure the lines are leaning towards one another.  It is my concession…to be legible but still compassionate.  And on occasion, when I hold a burnt sienna crayon in my hand, those three lines have a little extra company.