This morning, Ala Paredes walked out of her apartment. But she would not be coming back again.
This was not a conscious realisation at that time. I was too focused on getting to the Roads and Transport Authority office at a good, early time before it got too crowded.
I carried a red, plastic envelope with my original marriage certificate issued from Canberra nearly seven months ago.
I had been delaying changing my name for several reasons. Our honeymoon was to be in a few months time and I didn’t want to scramble around renewing my passport so soon before leaving, just so it could have my married name on it.
Second, I knew that changing my name would mean diving headfirst into a lengthy, frustrating bureaucratic maze. There was so much to consider. To borrow a quote from Boromir from “The Lord of the Rings”: “One does not simply walk into the Registry of Births and Deaths and emerge on the other side with a new name that will magically appear on your passport, driver’s license, bank accounts, and medical and tax records”. (Ok, that quote was a little bit longer than planned)
Nay. These are different departments that do not speak or collaborate with each other. I must knock on each door myself bearing a folder with the right set of required documentation, which varies slightly with each department. After the wedding, I was far too busy to navigate that labyrinth.
Finally, I am no slave to tradition (or so I like to think), and neither is my husband. He even encouraged me to keep my name as it was. I was under no pressure from him, and didn’t even bother changing my last name on my Facebook profile.
So why change my last name at all? Well... I foresee a family in my future, and I would like all of us to live under the same roof and have the same last name. Like the Flintstones. The Jetsons. The Adams Family. Like my family.
I know that families come in all sorts of variations, what with step-relatives, half-relatives, and de facto relationships, and it’s not really necessary to all have the same last name. But I would like my future family to all stand under the same name umbrella. (So maybe that means that I actually am a slave to tradition.)
I had made up my mind. “I will take your last name”, I told my husband. “Okay, if you want to”, he replied. Nothing more was said.
But it took a few months to even find the time to revise my driver’s license, the first step in legally changing my name. My waiting soon turned to frustration. And yet, when I finally found myself face-to-face with the clerk at the Roads and Transport Office, I was suddenly paralysed with fear at the finality of it all.
“So you want me to drop ‘Paredes’ and put in your husband’s last name, right?”, he asked me. A standard question. My mouth opened to give him a standard answer, but the anticipated “yes” did not materialise. Instead, I stared at him dumbly.
“Um...”, he said, sensing my hesitation.
“Um...”, I said, “can you give me a moment to think about it?”
I knew I didn’t have much time to think. His hand was on the mouse, and the cursor was on the “submit name change” button.
Drop my maiden name... the name I’ve had for more than three decades, the only name I’ve ever had. Why was I back-stepping? Women shed their maiden names and replace it with that of their husbands all the time. I would not be the first. A woman leaves her house when she marries and joins her husband’s house... right?
I harbour no doubts about building a house, a life, with my husband. But I couldn’t seem to swallow the thought of my legal identity completely dissolving into his. I pictured what would become of Ala Paredes if I discarded her... she would become a ghost, an identity without a person to inhabit. She would wander around a desolate underworld of forsaken identities, calling back to me unheard. In moments of future regret, I would maybe hear her cries in the distance, wondering if I were imagining it.
Paredes... what’s in a name? Seven letters, three syllables. The airy, tip-toeing “pah”, the voluptuous rolled “R” in the “reh” (like a wolf baring its teeth), punctuated by a bouyant, pirouetting “des”.
Those three sounds are my link to a lineage that I am proud of, my living relatives; the accomplished grandfather I never met because he died in a plane crash with a Philippine president; my father and his artistic contribution to society. My last name has cultural value which I am lucky to inherit and still hope to deserve one day.
But that’s not all. Ala Paredes once wrote a blog that was widely-read for at least six years. It was Ala Paredes who worked hard, pouring her blood and sweat into being an artist. It was Ala Paredes who moved out of home, decided who she wanted to be, built her own life, and became independent on her own terms. It would be a great injustice to wipe Ala Paredes clean from the records as if she didn’t exist.
This intense thought process took all of one minute. I told the clerk not to drop my maiden name, but to instead give it a special place right before my husband’s last name. I would legally use both. And no hyphen, please.
“Ok”, he said. “And should I change your status from ‘Miss’ to ‘Mrs.’?”
And in one click of the mouse, it was done. I walked away with a new, and really, really long last name. (Paredes has 7 letters, and my husband’s last name has 10... whew!)
I later relayed news of my name change to my mother, who seemed startled, as if she didn’t know it was coming. “Did you drop Paredes?”, she asked.
I told her that I originally meant to but back-stepped at the last minute. “I just couldn’t”, I told her.
“Good choice”, she said. Then, a pause. “I wish I had had more time to think about it when I got married more than 30 years ago. In the Philippines, you automatically take on your husband’s name. But for you, it would be wrong to give up an identity you’ve had for 32 years.”
And Ala Paredes B_ _ _ walked through the door of her apartment for the very first time.
