The Story in a Name

Nita Lessik is worried about her son. He's thinking about giving his girlfriend an engagement ring on Valentine's Day. Nita isn't worried about the girl; she's all a mother-in-law could hope for.

The problem is what to do about the stories they bring to the marriage, and how to give a name to the story they will tell together.

Nita knows that a name is the short form of a person's story. When someone says "Nita Lessik," they aren't just saying her name, they're telling her story.

Traditionally when a woman married, she merged her story with her husband's by taking his name. Ironically, she usually became the main character in the story that originally bore only his name. In the Nathan family, the famous "Grandma Nathan" was originally a Jones. But when anyone said "Nathan" they thought of the story the former Harriet Jones had told. When Grandma Nathan died, a new Grandma Nathan emerged from the next generation, the former Trudy Robinson, now the main narrator of the Nathan story. Waiting in the next generation, already telling the Nathan story in her own way, is the former Claire Tankovich.

When Nita and Chuck married, though, they decided to merge their names as well as their story. She was a Kessik, he was a Lessing. They became the Lessiks.

She tried to get her maid-of-honor to do the same when she got married, but she was a Washit and her husband-t0-be was an O'Neal, so they would have been the O'Shits. Thus Heather decided just to be an O'Neal.

But Nita's son, Mark, wants to marry a girl whose last name is Emswiler-Rommelfanger, and Nita is afraid he will become a Leswilerfanger, which is one hell of a story.