The Name

Just a quick thought process of something that I have personally gone through.

What’s in a name? A simple question that has been uttered numerous time’s over the centuries of our existence. Many people would question what a simple name would have to do with anything that relates to every day life. So really, what is in a name? I never guessed how painful it would be to realize how much actually is in a name. I was adopted to be “Summer Dawn Landstrom,” and recently I became married to be “Summer Dawn Mincks.” This story, however, revolves around the name I came to know myself as, Landstrom. It also revolves around the same name that has recently led to the destruction of my own personal identity. My biological mother, being and addict, was deemed unfit to raise me, so her mother, my Grandmother, became my adopted parent, along with her husband, David Charles Landstrom. At two my name changed to “Summer Dawn Landstrom,” and until recently, I never had thought to question it.

 

            I never thought that I would consider myself anything other than a Landstrom. From strong Swedish roots, the name has spent many a century as a depiction of warriors and protectors. Then my Grandfather died. Cleaning out his old things had been difficult, but it came to be easier than expected, I was a Landstrom, and we Landstroms were strong, we could get through anything. Then the time came when I gazed at the beautifully painted image of the Landstrom family crest…and it hit me…I am not a Landstrom. The pain was simple at first, just poke, not a prod, but then as the revelation further set into my mind, the ache in my chest grew from discomfort, to agony. I suppose I never admitted to myself, deep down, that my lifetime father figure was not blood related. The thought, hitting my mind like a freight train out of hell, came to be a question, “If I’m not a Landstrom…then who am I?”

 

How amazing it is, that a tattered painted symbol could turn my world upside down. As a child I stared at the image with pride, as it was “my crest”, the truth, being the opposite. Having no knowledge of the man who helped in my creation, my mother taking his name to her grave, has left me with little to fill an empty void, the questions constantly rattling around my skull, If I am without a true name, am I no one? Do I even exist? If I am not a Landstrom, who am I? All those years I spent signing my signature, what if I was really simply signing a lie. When I look in the mirror at my blonde hair, my freckled face, and my green eyes, none of which came from my mother’s side, whose face am I seeing? Whose name should I have been signing? And more importantly, the fearful question that seems to haunt my every moment, will I ever get the chance to find out?