I updated my Facebook profile last week.
I had been wanting to do it for some time but kept putting it off.
I changed back to my maiden name, and it was the weirdest thing I have done in a long time. I still look at it and it throws me a bit. Christina Olcott. I haven’t gone by that name in years. Since 2001 in fact.
I toyed with the idea for a while, and could never quite bring myself to change it. I mentioned to a friend that I thought about doing it, and she gave me the final push that I neededed to get it done. Of course, now I need to go throught he proper channels to have it done legally and change my drivers license and social security card.
Seeing my maiden name alone was sort of a freeing moment. I can remember being that twenty year old young woman who was so excited about taking her husband’s last name. I remember how long it took me to get used to signing my new last name, and slowly phasing out the old one.
Yesterday when the boys and I went to the YMCA for the afternoon, when I gave them my name, I had to pause for a moment to make sure that I had given them the correct one. Trey asked me why they called me Olcott, and I explained to him that that was my name before I married his Dad, and that I planned on changing back to it. Of course Conner instantly got confused and asked if his name would change too, and once I got it through his head that it wouldn’t, he was good to go and ready to hit the pool.
In the car on the way home, Trey made the comment that he thought it was “cool” that I was taking my name back. “You can be a totally different person now, Mom.”
I’m Christina Olcott again, and while it’s incredibly strange to me at times, it’s also exciting and liberating. It’s a new clean slate to start from, and I’m excited to see where it takes me.
Christina Olcott is a single mom of two boys. She lives in central Nebraska. Read her regularly on Fruita Moms.
