I started school a year early because my birthday fell at just the right time. First grade was one of the best experiences that I can remember since push up pops. It paled only in comparison to head-start. I remember the first few weeks of school. Everything was magical and playing all day took on a new vibration of organized, creative art. I just loved it. I had the best first grade teacher ever. She was funny and smart and so pretty. When she smiled her whole face lit up and she always, always had the best ideas. We made gifts for our parents, we had a piñata in her class, we made mask and so many other things. I loved getting my hands dirty and I got to use glue and who doesn’t like to use glue? It was then that I first decided that purple was my favorite color. The paint and the way it went on that easel paper, so bright and bold…I knew this was good thing.
As time moved on and we learned to write our names, my teacher seemed a little disturbed. I was writing “Tess”, on all my art. I will never forget the day she walked up to me and said, “why are you putting this “Tess” on all your papers. "That is not your name." I looked up at her with huge eyes like she had just killed me. She gave me my first disapproving look of my entire educational experience. I was devastated. Not only because she was upset with me, but because I had no idea “Tess” wasn’t my name. So she had asked me a question and I had to answer. My response was, “Tess is my name," as I stomped my foot! She told me my name was Teresa. I continued to write Tess on all my art and coloring pages. She continued to mark through Tess and put Teresa. Finally, my stubbornness outweighed her patience and she called my mother in for conference. In those days, there was no after-school, non embarrassing scheduled meetings. If your parents got called, they just came on down. No kids were taken outside to discuss anything privately, no, my mother was escorted over to my little table and shown that I had written “Tess” on my art, yet again. The teacher began to explain her displeasure of me to my mother. My mother tried to explain to her that my nick name was Tess, and that was all my family had ever called me. That I really didn’t know my name was Teresa. But from that point on, I was forced to write my full name. “Teresa Ann Manning”. Now, that might not seem long to you, but at five years old, it was truly punishment.
By the next year I was well known as Teresa Manning and I was writing it on all my assignments. So outside of school, I felt betrayed. Like I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t. So, I refused to go by Teresa at home. My family continued to call me Tess, with the exception of when my mothers patience wore thin and it was time for discipline. Then as time went on I heard “Teresa Ann”, more and more. It’s funny how a small child can associate disapproval to a name. When I first heard someone call me Teresa, it was in a disapproving tone. The only time after that I heard “Teresa Ann” was when my mother was very unhappy with me. So somewhere deep inside I reasoned that the name “Teresa Ann” was bad, it wasn’t me. It was only people being mad at me. I was Tess and I was always gonna be Tess.
The day came when I had to battle cancer and then my mother did and somehow all the dynamics of our life and relationship changed and it was like I was living life in reverse. Somehow, she surrendered and embraced her brazen, rebellious child. I began to look at her differently. I watched her sparkly blue eyes grow tired and her energy quiet, no longer boisterous or disapproving. Everything had been sifted in my heart and the only thing left was love. So this blog is my homage to my mother. My surrender of “Tess”, and my acceptance of my namesake “Teresa Ann…” It is time I lay that little girl down and be the woman my mother expects me to be. It is for her that I choose this name, no other. Childhood is gone and I now dance in content submission for I truly am my mothers daughter, “Teresa Ann”. I love you mama.
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