by any other name

i handed my identity over to a petite government agent with a head full of tightly wound curls. i scribbled my new signature on a sheet of paper and was promised a social security card with my new name in two weeks.

back in my beat up honda civic, i sat in the blistering heat and cried.

i signed away the name i shared with my hero… my father.

the name i shared with my mother. the name i shared with my sister.

i wiped my tears away and prayed i did my maiden name proud.

i hope i was sufficiently weird.

i hope i turned out as loud, bold, and opinionated as my parents raised me to be.

in the years i was blessed to bear the mastrangelo name, i did my best to cause a ruckus. i am proud to be the first mastrangelo to graduate college. proud i visited italy with an italian last name. proud i learned to cook the family sauce. proud of all i did and didn’t do.

now, i blaze forward with a new name. my husband’s name. a name saturated with incredible love and rich armenian roots. a name almost as difficult to spell and pronounce as the one i leave behind.

today as i swallowed salty tears, my mother reminded me this new name does not signify a new danielle. i will live life just as loudly as before. i will continue to be the sparkly, slightly irreverent animal i have been my whole life.

on the day of my wedding my father wrote, “it’s hard to imagine that someone who has done so much in such a short amount of time is really just getting started.”

like always, my father is right.

daddy and ma – thank you for showing me what this beast called marriage is really all about. thank you for making my childhood as a mastrangelo intensely colorful, noisy, unorthodox, and magical. thank you for reminding me this is just the beginning.