my name is Darlene. get used to it.
Apparently my name is still Darlene. I can't stop answering to it because I still find it very amusing that my son has invented this new name for me. It fascinates me.
When my nephew was very young he used to call me Mimi. I loved this, but relatives discouraged it. "Make him call you by your real name, Sharon." Try as he would, he couldn't pronounce Sharon and called me Tin-tin.
I said it then, I'll say it now: I miss the days when I was Mimi.
What difference does it make? If a kid wants to make up a new name for you, what harm is in it? Who's to say their version isn't truer? Maybe I do look like a Darlene.
Maybe that's what it is: it's the different perspective that intrigues me. The worst thing about being a child myself was this adult insistence on their version being the right one. I promised myself that if I ever grew up (I had my doubts!) I'd remember what this felt like, this suffocating, claustrophobic littleness grown-up people always wanted to force you into. (What do you know about it? You're just a kid. This is just the way it is.)
It's true I can't live on imagination. But there's no reason I have to give up all of it.
So much is made up anyway, even in the grown up world. Blogging is a form of make believe.
But so what?
A grown up person would look at a watercolor wash I'd just done and see this:
I looked at it and saw this instead:
It doesn't matter if my name is Darlene or Mimi or Sharon. It just matters that I don't stop seeing the world with new eyes.
(matters to who?)
(matters to me.)
When my nephew was very young he used to call me Mimi. I loved this, but relatives discouraged it. "Make him call you by your real name, Sharon." Try as he would, he couldn't pronounce Sharon and called me Tin-tin.
I said it then, I'll say it now: I miss the days when I was Mimi.
What difference does it make? If a kid wants to make up a new name for you, what harm is in it? Who's to say their version isn't truer? Maybe I do look like a Darlene.
Maybe that's what it is: it's the different perspective that intrigues me. The worst thing about being a child myself was this adult insistence on their version being the right one. I promised myself that if I ever grew up (I had my doubts!) I'd remember what this felt like, this suffocating, claustrophobic littleness grown-up people always wanted to force you into. (What do you know about it? You're just a kid. This is just the way it is.)
It's true I can't live on imagination. But there's no reason I have to give up all of it.
So much is made up anyway, even in the grown up world. Blogging is a form of make believe.
But so what?
A grown up person would look at a watercolor wash I'd just done and see this:
I looked at it and saw this instead:
It doesn't matter if my name is Darlene or Mimi or Sharon. It just matters that I don't stop seeing the world with new eyes.
(matters to who?)
(matters to me.)
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