Tags
African American, Cherokee, Danish, Genealogy, Government Identification, Heritage, Hillbilly, Homeland Security, Lowell Malcolm Britt, Mystery, Neil Gaiman
Memoir Mondays are a flash back to the past to examine my writerly roots. People, places and events that shaped me and influence my world and how I write about it.
The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision.
P.A.’s ‘Little Indian Princess’
So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.
~Neal Gaiman
While in my previous Memoir Monday, I pondered the question of representation. Back in the day (early 60′s in my case), it was brave enough for me to be the Indian when my cousins were all cap-gun wielding cowboys and cowgirls. What I realized by looking through family photos and stringing together bits of family data was that there was a grand chance of African-American bloodlines coming from both my grandfather’s parents. While I have questions more than answers, the possibility throws new light on family relations and twists on the plots of our collective timeline. Mind you, I’ve seen copies of the census reports that identify everyone as white even as other evidence would suggest otherwise. Not an uncommon thing to have an airbrushed identity back in those days, I’m finding out.
When the past crashes into the present
The Name Game: Reiske, Mitchell, Sailiata
It is getting harder and harder to reinvent oneself in this day of instant internet fact-checking. Good and bad can be said of it. Lack of privacy, for one. As we steam our way toward out future at greater and greater velocity, it is a wonder at the strange things that hold us to our past.
Because it is so easy to discover so much of a person’s past, one would think that it would be snap to get accesses to your own personal records, get your ID reissued, all of that necessary stuff we take for granted as we bop along at electric speed. No so fast. That’s what I found out at a point when I could ill afford it. Homeland Security is quietly changing all of the rules. During the time when I had my concussion, my Hawaii Drivers permit was set to expire. I was meaning to get it taken care of earlier, but how many friends with cars can take time off of work to get me down to the DMV? Easily put off until I had to. I take the bus, after all. But then the concussion where I couldn’t take the driving test. And the change in all of the rules.
The Name Game
My Social Security card has my legal name on it, as does my expired Illinois and Hawaii drivers licenses as well as my expired passport. But my birth certificate, now that it is a different matter. My copy of my marriage license (Both of them. Married twice to the same man because LA lost the original documents) were being shipped from the Mid-West. Before I realized that my documents were insufficient, I tried to get a duplicate copy of my marriage certificate from the filing courthouse. They needed a valid state issued ID to process it. A Catch-22. Some old episode of the Twilight Zone, that is what my life had become. I only thought I existed. I could Google myself and see quite a trail of identity, but I wasn’t able to vote in the Hawaii primary.
As vulnerable as I feel, I keep thanking my lucky stars that I am not stuck in Arizona in this condition looking Mexican. How awful is that to even think? But I believe it needs to be said.
The full story will not be told to protect the innocent (of heart).
Yes, I just received the needed documentation in this week’s mail. How? Let’s say, I proved my identity beyond a reasonable doubt in an area where there exists a bit of wriggle room. Am I privileged? You betcha! The way the rules now stand, I should not have gotten this exception. Others might not be so lucky. Who does this affect? Predominately women and poor women at that. If I hadn’t had a different last name from my birth certificate. This would be moot.
Don’t let this happen to you.
Make sure that your birth certificate still shows the official seal imprint. It is worthless if it doesn’t. Yes, even if it originally had a seal, if you can no longer see it––No Good. Same goes with your marriage license. You need to have documentation of going from one name to another. They didn’t accept my seal imprinted divorce papers without the marriage license.
Don’t let this happen to anyone.
Call your member congress and your senator. Tell them that this unnecessary level of documentation is bad government. It is too costly to implement and has no real use. The government workers that I dealt with during this crisis told me that they are having to go through anger management classes and they have psychological counseling due to the hostility and anger of the folks caught in these binds. I am far from alone, it seems.
Laurie Meggesin, a friend of mine going back to 6th grade who currently occupies her time as a lawyer, writer and kayak-er in the great state of Florida, also wrote on this subject for her firm’s blog this summer. Trial Lawyers Must Band Together to Protect Voters’ Rights, Now More Than Ever.
What has this to do with my writerly self?
Plenty. For one thing, this year and more intensely this summer has been nothing if not the past crashing in on the present. Memoir Mondays are one of attempts to sort through some of the surfacing materials. Some of the materials are physical, some emotional, some spiritual, and quite a lot of it is all of the above. And boy does it have an effect on my writing!…and sometimes the lack thereof.
Any horror stories on your end? Have you felt yourself suddenly vulnerable? Has there been a time when you could not do simple functions of modern life? Tell us your stories.
Hey, Lori. I think being a Southerner has made me take family secrets for granted. In the South, everybody’s got ‘em.
We like to say the Northerners hide their crazies in asylums. In the South, we let crazy Uncle Amos, who once played minor league baseball, wander around town in his tattered old uniform talking about a championship run that ended when his center fielder dropped a pop-fly in the eleventh inning. As a Southern Lit professor I once had said, “we trot out our crazy and dare anybody to criticize us for it.”
Sharing a secret, even when sharing it with a whole town, can be community-building. I think the nature of the secret probably determines the depth at which it’s buried. Great post!
Thanks, Kasie. It posted on accident. It’s finished now. But there is definitely more to the story and the story of my summer. Going to take some unpacking, that. I have my roots in the South, but I spent enough time in the North to want to have my game face on in public. Glad to have you stopping in.
quite a situation you had! those are the things that happen to me, too. it took me 7 sets of fingerprints before they accepted them for me to teach in nebraska. i finally had to go to the FBI to get them done. i joked with them that i thought they could take a half print off of a wine glass to convict someone, but the dept. of ed couldn’t take 7 sets of my full prints as proof i’m good. so i feel your pain!
Well, I now know who to finger in a murder mystery! 7 sets? Wow.
“the past crashing in on the present.” That is so true for me, too. And the issue you raise is alive on the mainland, with all the newly imposed voter ID laws floating around. I was so proud of the fact that here in Mississippi, we voted down the personhood amendment, but we turned right around (well, not we, really; I didn’t vote for it, and I know a lot of people who didn’t) and voted in an ID requirement for registration that’s so convoluted, you wouldn’t believe it. (If you don’t have a driver’s license or some other form of valid ID, you can get a “free” state-issued ID, but to do that, you have to have the valid birth certificate which costs either $15 or $22, I forget which.) The law has not yet been challenged by the Justice Department, but I expect it will be. In time for the presidential election? I doubt it. That’s what we’re known for, I guess; good old Mississippi, dead last in just about everything except obesity. So it does seem that collectively, our terrible past is crashing in on our present. But there is that ray of hope with the personhood amendment. There is that. Thanks, Lori, for such a thought-provoking post! Love it!
Yes, I was watching that personhood amendment in the news. I think folks really think that they are passing laws that help (in their world view) but don’t understand the consequences. I always laugh at the Texas effort to define marriage as a man and a woman. When that thing passed it was worded so strictly as to nullify ALL marriages and they had to quickly strike it down.
What is interesting here in Hawaii is that this is not a state action. It was stricter rules imposed by Homeland Security. If all states don’t have the same requirements as Hawaii from Homeland Security, then that is even more worrisome. Hawaii is predominately non-white and Democratic.
The reason I couldn’t vote is because my address had changed this year. That’s why I would have had to show additional ID at my new polling place.
Excellent post, Lara. I become more and more frustrated with the red tape required to function in this country every year. I’ve decided to “go back to basics” and apply to resume my maiden name (as soon as I can find a spare $60 for the filing fee), which is why I use Melody Pearson as my writing ID. Still, I worry. All my work history and education is in Galloway. I fear I’ll face the same conundrum no matter which way I go.
I’m finding myself with more understanding for women who opt to hyphenate their names or just keep their maiden names when they marry. Of course, there are still men who have a problem with that. My granddaughter’s fiance almost had a breakdown when she suggested it. I really like the way a couple in our church has done it. They both changed their names to the hyphenated version.
Most of my West Coast friends kept their names. But because of the fact that it was still rather novel for a white woman to have children “of color,” I kept my married name even after the divorce. Well, that was one of the reasons. And now I’ve had it for what will soon be 30 years. Anything else would feel odd except the Lara Britt, but that is only a partial identity, a writerly one.
Every time I travel outside of the country (and now I’ll add Arizona & those states that have followed suit) I stress about losing documents. I have a good back up system to retrieve copies if I ever lose a passport or Driver’s License, but it sucks big time to go through the hassle you’ve had to go through.
It’s been a positive and a negative for me to keep my married last name although I’m divorced. I won’t go through the scenarios, but I’m sure you can imagine.
While I appreciate most of the DHS work for safety, sometimes the red tape just = $$$ for government coffers.
I would say it isn’t even government coffers but the government business contractor’s coffers. I think of drug testing for food stamp recipients. Tests show that the only folks that benefit are the drug testing companies.
I wouldn’t mind extra hassles in case of security. But there is no justifiable reason to upend a perfectly working system that Hawaii has had in place for so long.
It takes the humanity out of life…as well as the common sense.
Boy oh boy that’s some situation! For me, trying to get my Czech citizenship back for an EU passport was a nightmare because my last name changed twice; first time from my parent’s divorce when my mother changed it to hers and second when I married my first husband. Among other fun things I had to track down all documents in triplicate and apply to the high Czech court for recognition. Took years! And I still have to fly to Ottawa to pick it up in person.
With the ease of internet, this should all be a snap. Which is how it was less than 6 months ago…at least here in Hawaii.
Pingback: October: The Times They Are A-Challenging « Writing Space
Pingback: October: The Times They Are A-Challenging « Writing Space