Honey

My family lived in Syracuse, New York when I was in first and second grade. We lived in a large apartment community and I attended Faith Baptist Academy. My family attended services at the home of Father Philip and Reverend Marthelia McCaffrey as part of the Christian Community of Syracuse. It was a small community, much like a family, and I spent many fun-filled hours with children my age as part of the church’s frequent gatherings.

My best friend at school was named Marcy and my best friend at home was named Margot. I had a bicycle and I loved to ride around my apartment community, but unfortunately one day it was taken by the neighborhood troublemakers and dismantled to become part of some kind of wagon/go-cart contraption. I was very sad about losing my bike.

I loved to sing and write stories. I won a prize at school for best creative writing in my grade. The story was about a clown whose parents had died (the parents always died in my stories) who joined a circus and got along with everyone and made all the children laugh. I sang as part of our church events. I was the star [in the sky] in the nativity story and welcomed a newcomer to our community with “Consider yourself” from the musical, Oliver.

Some of the kids I knew had a good time teasing me because my name rhymed with “farty”. Endlessly they would sing-song “Marty farty” over and over again until I couldn’t take it anymore. When my parents explained to me that a newcomer to the church had been given a Christian name during a baptismal ceremony and that they could choose to be called this new name forever, the gears in my teeny little head started to turn and it wasn’t long before I began to beg my mom to let me be given a new name as well.

It never occurred to me that I could have just thought up a new name and insisted that everyone start calling me whatever it was. I believed that renaming could only take place through a religious ceremony, and so I begged to be baptized.

At first, my mom thought it was the school, Faith Baptist Academy, that was convincing me to go a little overboard with the whole baptism thing, but when I explained that I wanted a new name, she was not only open to the idea but arranged the entire event. Father Philip and Reverend Marthelia meditated all night long and into the morning until my name had finally come to them. After the baptism ceremony to which I paid absolutely no attention, I was handed a certificate with my new name inscribed in lovely black letters. The certificate read “Clare”.

I was very excited about my new name. I decided that I wanted the maximum number of letters, so chose to spell my name “Claire”. Whenever anyone teased me, I would very calmly explain to them that Marty was not my name anymore, so their cruelness could no longer hurt me. Changing my name gained enough respect with these kids that they actually stopped teasing me altogether.

It wasn’t long, though, before we were packing up to move again, this time to Tennessee. I would be starting a whole new life at a new school with new friends, just in time to start the third grade.