Will I Smell as Sweet?

I spent the first 26 years of my life with my father’s last name. Then I spent 23 years with my husband’s last name. I will now spend the rest of my life with a name of my own choosing.

My maternal great-grandmother chose her own name. She was born October 18, 1894 and her parents called her Dutch until she graduated from high school. They couldn’t seem to settle on a name, so they simply let her choose her own legal name when she became an adult. She chose Mary for the woman who sewed her graduation dress and Adelaide for a family friend. Best was her last name because that was her father’s last name.

I only met Nanny — as we called Mary Adelaide in my family — once when I was 3 or 4 years old. I clearly remember climbing the wooden stairs on the outside of the two-story house in Punxsutawney that belonged to my grandmother’s sister where Nanny lived out her final years. She sat in an oversize easy chair leaning on a cane. She wore enormous black men’s shoes. When my brother took me to the bathroom, I was frightened of the claw feet on the tub. I think I thought the tub was going to chase me.

When I stayed with my mom after leaving my husband’s house, Mom told me stories about Nanny. How she loved to dance and go to parties. How she and her husband, John Sherman McCoy, slept in separate bedrooms for years. How the first time Pup-Pup – as we called Great-Grampa McCoy in my family – hit her, Nanny picked up a chair and broke it over his head. How that may have also been the impetus for the separate bedrooms.

Nanny was short — five foot three — and homely. But in all the photographs I have of her, she is smiling brightly.

She died in 1977. Her daughters, Helen and Mary Ellen, lived about 35 years longer. Her granddaughter is my mother, who I hope will continue living for a long time to come.

March 1 of this year I appeared in a magistrate’s office and legally changed my name to Sharon Best.

If you have read any of my earlier blogs, you know that I recently blew up my life and am forging a new one. I spent all of 2017 being as entirely honest as I could be, both with everyone in my life and with myself – which was, honestly, the hardest part. Moving forward, honesty is still my main tenet. But it’s a little more than that.

I try every day to be the best possible person I can be. How that manifests on any given day changes, but the focus on being and doing my best does not. If I do my best and behave in ways that align with my core values, I should have no cause for regret.

Marriage and divorce are common causes for a name change, so I decided I would to take the opportunity to change my name and reclaim that part of my identity.

As I focused on the idea of honesty and empowerment over the last year, I contemplated what name I could take that would reflect my efforts to be my best self. For a while the name Frank held the top position. But it seemed a little too on the nose.

Then, when I told my mom about my name changing idea, she told me about Nanny choosing her own name after being nameless for so long.

Those stories about Nanny immediately rang true. The fact that she chose her own name seemed like predestination.

Choosing a name that is connected to my matrilineal family and that will remind me every day to be the best possible version of myself feels incredibly empowering. When I got my new driver’s license, it read like this:

Best

Sharon

That’s what I feel like these days: the best Sharon there has been yet.

Over the next weeks and months, I’ll be changing to my new legal name on many platforms. I’ll do my best to link existing email and other accounts to new ones so we all have a chance to catch up. But there might be some that fall through the cracks and there might be a few I leave in my former name. If you address me as my new name and it takes a minute for me to acknowledge it, be patient with me. Like everything else I've changed over the last year, this is a process that will take some time.