<a href="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/3746130735_503fba2127.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-469" title="3746130735_503fba2127" src="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/3746130735_503fba2127.jpg" alt="" width="520" height="407" /></a>
<h5 style="padding-left: 360px;">Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/genealogyphotos/">Genealogy Photos</a></h5>
In my little nuclear family, there are five people and three last names.

I have my parents' last name, my two daughters have their dad's last name, and Jason and his daughter share a last name.

Usually it just is what it is, and we don't even think twice about it. Sometimes we joke about it, and combine all three of our last names into a hyphenated, five-syllable conglomeration (it could easily be worse than five syllables, you know).

<strong>And sometimes being a family that doesn't share a last name in common is a logistical pain, or even a social hurdle.</strong> On Saturday, for instance, we all were at the farmers' market and decided to participate in a community art project. As we were getting ready to leave, the woman organizing the project said, "Oh, I need you to sign your family in so we have a record of everyone who worked on these pieces."

I wrote each name on the sign-in sheet, but I felt the urge to add several footnotes detailing our relationships to one another—wife, daughter, step-daughter, and so on. Maybe a diagram would help clarify?

<strong>It's not a huge deal, of course, but sometimes I feel the need to explain myself to people, or like I somehow have to legitimize my very real connection to these people I don't seem legally connected to.</strong> Is that old-fashioned of me?
<h4>All of my names: I can explain everything</h4>
I generally don't feel old-fashioned. After my divorce, I didn't think I'd ever get married again, because I questioned the importance of a legal document of the sort (clearly I changed my mind, but that's another story).

And when it comes to marriage and names, I had long questioned my decision to take my first husband's name, which I did because it seemed symbolically important, at the time. After our marriage ended, even though I struggled with the idea of having a different last name than my daughters, I decided to reclaim my maiden name. In that case, <strong>the change symbolized a reclaiming of my individual identity—the one I started life with, the me that was just me, and didn't need to legally change in order to bind my heart and soul to another.</strong>

Incidentally, it was also a heck of a lot of work to legally revert to my maiden name, so when Jason and I decided to get married, my first and final thought was pretty much "no way am I taking on a different name <em>again</em>."
<h4>Making your own decisions, your own meaning</h4>
What it gets down to, though, is what ultimately matters to me (or to you). What actually brings meaning and rich symbolism to your life (because symbols can be strong and have a purpose)? Are you able to let go of what you think you are <em>supposed</em> to do, or what's expected of you, embracing what matters and shedding what might be nothing more than empty tradition?

I'm not advocating for name-keeping. I'm just an advocate for figuring out what matters to each of us, and why. When I was younger, <strong>I craved labels and names that could serve the purpose of helping me sort things out, and could give others a user-friendly interface for accessing me.</strong> I wanted people to glance at the public face of my life, make a guess about what was going on, and pretty much be right. Not only was that easier and cleaner, it made me feel like I had somehow succeeded at something important.

Now I'm more willing to embrace complexity, or at least to roll with it. I can see, at times, that people are confused about my family, for any number of reasons. And I sort of think a bit of that confusion is good, more than bad. <strong>It forces people to think about what's "normal," and if there's really any such thing. It makes me more confident about standing behind the decisions I've made about my own life, whether or not they're decisions you would make for your life.</strong>

As a result, of course, it also makes me more open to what others choose for themselves, even if I don't "get it." I don't, after all, need to get it. <em>They</em> need to get it.

Sometimes I still fall back into my old ways of wanting everything to be nice and neat and crystal-clear. Or I have those old, knee-jerk habits of feeling apologetic because my life simply <em>isn't</em> nice and neat. But I've come a long, long way. I can assure you of that.