Excavating a Name
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
~ Soren Kierkegaard
Prelude
There are moments in life in which you pause for a moment and think, ‘This is important. This could change the course of my life. I’ll remember this for the rest of my life.’ Graduating high school. A first love. Your first job. Marriage. All of these are readily understood as important milestones in life that leave an impact on us. I’m not interested in those big obvious moments here.
No, I want to look at a series of events that, while meaningful in ways both large and small at the time, did not seem to carry any obvious import or foreshadowing of the future. And truly, it is only here, years later, that I am able to look back and think, ‘Well of course it all fits together.’ Like a tidy three act play in which the characters are introduced, they experience conflict, and then resolution, the last five years have unfolded as though they were scripted. If I’m honest, were I to read this in a work of fiction, I’d probably think, ‘Too scripted! Too many coincidences to be believable!’
And yet here we are.
Act One: Recurring Dream
Although I said five years, we have to begin actually farther back in my past. And when I say ‘far back,’ I’m sorry to say I can’t be much more specific. There is no hard date in which I can recall the first time I had a dream that I would sporadically have again and again over the years. I’m fairly confident in saying that the first instance was some time in my late teens. Slightly more frustrating, even though I would have this dream repeatedly, there was no particular rhyme or reason for when it would come along, much like a re-run on TV.
So, what was the dream? Although the specifics would change in each ‘telling,’ the basic sequence of events were always the same. I would find myself in a house in which I was the resident, if not the owner, and I would be walking through it and find a door that for whatever peculiar reason, I’d never been through before. Upon opening it, I would immediately walk down into what would appear to be a fully furnished ‘home within in a home.’
To be clear, I wasn’t experiencing some kind of dreamworld ability jump to a completely different place. Rather, it was as though just below the existing house, there was this slightly subterranean, separate but connected part to the one I knew and was already living in. In each instance of the dream, I would be slightly but pleasantly surprised to find this ‘other home’ and I would be excited to explore all this extra space. It was a sort of ‘This is all mine too?!’ excitement. But, I would also be somewhat perplexed by two things. First, how did I not know this other section existed? Second, since it was always fully furnished and looked lived in, whose stuff was this?! Could I do whatever I wanted with it?
Those are the most salient points. As I said, the details might differ but the basic outline was the same each time to the point that eventually, upon waking, I would immediately think, ‘Weird…that dream again!’ I would ponder it, like a film critic considering this latest remake of a classic. ‘Why was this particular detail different? What was important about the aspects that didn’t change?’ But eventually, I’d move on and forget about it, until it popped up again, usually at least one but often several years elapsing before the next occurrence.
For those of you who fancy yourself dream interpreters, the symbolism is probably right there in bright neon colors for you. It is certainly crystal clear to me now. But you’ll have to take my word for it when I add that, no, it was never obvious to me in all those years. Clearly this house within a house could be interpreted as a metaphor for my subconscious and/or some enormous aspect of myself that was hidden and just waiting to be discovered. Why I could miss the glaring obviousness of it all will become clear in time. And in fact, it would take an utterly new and different retelling of the dream for me to suddenly sit back and, metaphorically as well as literally, smack myself in the forehead.
I remember relaying everything you’ve just read to my therapist and then musing aloud, “I wonder if I’m going to keeping uncovering things like this?” His response, “Oh yeah, definitely,” was so fast and definitive that my expression prompted him to say, “Shit, did I say that out loud?” After dramatically coughing, he said, “Ok, therapist voice…. ‘Do you think there’s more to uncover?’” Oh yes. Much more. Little did I know, I was busy excavating my way to a new name. But before we get to that, let’s go back to a day that was dramatic even if I had no idea how much it would alter the direction of my life.
Act Two, Scene One: Recovering a Family
On July 29, 2015, I arrived at work and like any other day, sat down at my desk, woke my computer up, and started with email. There, sitting almost at the top, was an email that was from a strange address. The message was extraordinarily short.
Subject: Search
Justin from Dallas, Tx. ?
Clearly, this person knew who I was. But they were…? After the initial confusion and a little bit of fear, I decided to reply without giving a direct answer, responding, “Sorry, who is this?” Almost immediately, came the response. I had just come back to my desk, and while still standing, I read the answer in the preview pane. “Hi. My name is Vanessa.” It was my sister. I more or less fell into my chair in shock. Someone I hadn’t spoken to in decades. For a more detailed account of what happened next, hit pause and head over to 33 Percent, the essay in which I detail some of what transpired after this most extraordinary correspondence. Suffice it to say, this was one of those big moments in which I realized, ‘I think something important has just happened….’
Reconnecting with my sister and my father’s family on that first trip back to the ‘homeland’ was like stepping back in time. I remember specifically making a point to go to what remained of my grandmother’s shop, finding just the foundation but also what remained of recognizable flooring. I stood there, trying to recall the spot where the hot metal cooking table had been and remembering, as a child how terrified I was watching her reach out over it, wondering how she didn’t burn herself. And of course, going back to her house, though different in terms of furnishings, it was immediately recognizable. While the house had shrunk in my adult eyes, there was still the childlike awe of how incredibly high and sparkly the ceilings were.
It was this trip, I would later realize, in which the drama of this play would really get going. Moment upon moment from this point forward, I would be inexorably changing direction and heading into uncharted territory. Like a prospector who thinks he’s hit a mother lode and then another and another, I would find myself digging deep into family and culture as well as digging deep into myself. While the rewards for all this effort were huge, the risks would be equally enormous. For every chunk of shiny metal or every gem chipped out of the rock, there may be a tremor threatening a cave in as the earth tries to guard her secrets.
Act Two, Scene Two: Writing
To extend the previous mining metaphor, my tool was not a pick axe but one no less equally sharp. I picked up my pen, creating this blog, Pluma Azul, to answer what I believed was my grandmother’s call to use a gift I’d left dormant for decades. To learn more about that experience, head to Feathers for a more detailed account. It would be through writing that I would start to both recover and uncover parts of myself, my place within my family, and ultimately my place in this world. Writing would also be what saved me.
I remember, almost as soon as I was able to write coherent sentences, I started writing little stories for myself. Going through old boxes after my mother died, I discovered what is probably my earliest story. As a third grader, I wrote this little gem, spelling and grammar errors kept for the authenticity!
The Pumpkin
One day I was walking in my pumpkin patch. It was almost Halloween and I was going to sale some pumpkins. Suddenly I herd a voice. I was scared. Then I saw a pumpkin with eyes, mouth, nose, I said wow! Then I took him home and dress’t him with my baby clothes. Then we had a party with my friends.
Both I and those closest to me find this hilarious as it clearly foreshadowed my intense passion for all things Halloween! Looking back on this story though, I can’t help but think if I could go back to that little kid and quietly whisper, “Keep it up. You have no idea the crazy stuff you’re going to write one day. This is just the start!”
Act Two, Scene Three: Writing as Therapy
All through junior high, I would write in a journal as a way to process the turmoil of teenage years, and in particular as a kid attracted to other boys. My journal, having recently skimmed it, is full of all of the cringey, embarrassing melodrama and self-absorption you’d expect from that age. As I got older, more confident, and more outgoing, I’d spend less and less time cataloguing the various highs and lows that felt so extreme at the time. By high school, I was writing actual papers and so my focus turned to ‘real writing.’
Even though I would stop journaling in high school, upon going to college I would turn to letter writing to detail the events of my life, and I would use these letters as a way to process all the heady changes brought on by leaving not just my hometown, but state and region as well. The beauty of writing letters at this point in time is that they were written on a computer and thus could be saved. In effect, I was still journaling but now with a one-on-one audience which at times would respond.
Graduating college, I continued writing friends, although now we’d moved to email. And although I would dabble in poetry, no doubt full of teen-like angst as most of it was focused on early loves and relationships, I would still be a fan of writing long, detailed email messages. Following the evolution of technology, I then turned to writing in online journals, in message boards, and beginning correspondences with far flung ‘internet friends.’ My posts would vary between a diary-like entry to the David Sedaris style humorous anecdotes. I had only the vaguest sense though that I was writing with a purpose.
I flirted with returning to fiction and would start and abandon a story idea based on an historical home I’d visited once. It made a strong impression on me and prompted me to wrestle with a macabre idea with the home as a backdrop. I wouldn’t actually complete this story until almost twenty years later. And when I did finally finish it, I remember thinking, ‘No, this was the right time. I actually couldn’t write this when I was that young. I needed a lot more life experience. A lot more self-awareness.’ But oh, how those words would come back to haunt me. If you want to enjoy that bit of gothic horror, check out Having Professor Magdelinskas for Dinner.
The origin of the one, and to date only, novella I’ve ever written, Of the Blood, was a strange and vivid dream about becoming a vampire on the run from a shadowy group of vampire hunters. I recall waking up in the middle of the night from this dream, immediately filled with questions. It was so peculiar that I remembered quite a bit of it even after waking up the next morning. And, as with the gothic horror story, I am shocked about how it foreshadowed what was to come. It opened with the following lines:
Bewildered. That was the word that came to Preston’s mind. It was one of those words that you always read but you never heard anyone actually use. But, he thought, in the few seconds he had to consider his immediate situation, bewildered perfectly described how he felt right then, how he had felt most of this evening, and most of the past week. How on earth had, what should otherwise be fiction, become reality for him?
The rest of this novella would focus on abandonment, betrayal, and grappling with ideas about what makes us human and special. It was a fun little project that took years to finish but I realize now, I was using a fantasy world to shield myself from my real world. That in and of itself is not unusual of course. There’s a reason Marvel Comic movies, Netflix series like Stranger Things, and Harry Potter novels are so popular!
I would turn back to writing in earnest after starting Pluma Azul to chronicle the extraordinary experience of reconnecting with my family and the birthright to my heritage. Up until that point, I would write and share with just a few friends but now I was choosing to step out into the world with what I had to say. In all of this, I kept circling around the same couple of themes: hidden knowledge and self-awareness that sometimes develops over time, but sometimes with sudden and shocking events.
Finally, I would turn to writing, in the form of an essay that I was trying to use as a way to intellectualize my first flirtation with gender. In just a few months though, I would be writing in a desperate effort to manage the emotional brawl taking place my mind. This real-time account of the implosion that happened once I decided to ‘do something about gender’ ended up being sixty single-spaced pages of torrid mental drama. In it, every high and low of two years is captured. Long, almost daily journal entries chronicled the very real trauma of realizing my gender was not at all what I’d believed it to be for so long. Like a powerless spectator, I had to stand and watch it burn to the ground. At times, I did have the faintest realization that, once it was all said and done, I had some first-rate writing on my hands! For an example of that, dip into A Letter to 11/11/18 for my essay on that harrowing year, or The Girl Who Would Rule, an allegory of that experience.
Act Three: A Name
At the beginning of my transition, I realized I had to do something about my name. As with so many aspects of transition, I kept bumping into things like a drunk looking for the light switch late at night. Changing my name was one of them. It never occurred to me in the beginning that this might be something I’d have to address. Insert palm smacking forehead emoji here!
I was chatting with a friend one evening early on and I remember saying, “Well, I mean if I were going to do anything, I guess I could just add an E to the end of Justin and bam, I’m done.” Always thinking I’m too clever by half, I then actually followed the advice of other trans people and tried that out, saying it out loud. Eventually, the drunk finds the light switch and when they do, what they see usually isn’t pretty. Add it to the pile of realizations I had during this period” ‘Well shit, I guess this is an issue for me….damnit!’ Fast forward through several months where I tried on a couple different names. I started out looking for some nice gender-neutral, i.e. safe, options. God bless the barista at Starbucks who gamely kept up with all this!
And then, a friend asked about the one I thought I’d settled on, “Well does it have any special meaning for you?” I was gob smacked. All this time, I was trying to find a ‘safe’ option. But with that question, I realized I wasn’t coming at this process from the best place. Late one night, I was walking just my Rottweiler, Roxy, around the neighborhood, and in the darkness and solitude, it came to me. ‘What if I were to take a name from my family?’ I cycled quickly through all the women’s names and immediately landed on my paternal grandmother, Cayetana. I thought, ‘Maybe I should take some modified version of that?’ which prompted me to remember one of my cousin’s named her daughter Caya, in honor of our grandmother. I got in touch with her and asked if that would be ok with her and she was on board. Mission accomplished! Right?
Around that same time, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker came out in theatres. My entire office trooped off to see it right before the university closed for winter recess. It had been one year almost exactly since my whole gender adventure began and after a brutal twelve months, this movie had an intense impact on me. In the dramatic final fight scene, Emperor Palpatine tells Rey, “You are nothing. A scavenger girl is no match for the power in me.” Rey responds, “I’m all the Jedi” whereupon she then defeats him. As I sat there, I could not help but think of all that I had learned over the last several years regarding ancient Mexican culture and the importance of drawing upon your ancestors for your strength. In my home, I have a wooden print photo my sister made of our grandmother and below, the following quote:
All that your ancestors had to go through for you to be here and you doubt yourself?
How dar you.
You come from a legacy of survival that is to never be questioned.
In the last scene of the movie, Rey returns to Tatooine, the planet where the entire saga began. As she finishes burying Luke and Leia’s lightsabers, an old woman asks who she is. She replies with just, “Rey.” The woman presses, “Rey who?” After a moment, she replies, “Rey Skywalker.” Like a lightning bolt, it hit me. ‘No. I’m taking the whole name. My name is Cayetana.’
Epilogue: The Recurring Dream Resolved
While it might be easy to say that was the end of the story, a few more things needed to happen. Even though I knew I could ‘just take the name,’ I felt I had to get the Navarro matriarch’s blessing. That meant coming out to her. After a number of stomach-churning anxious days, I finally made the call, the details of which will remain private. But after plenty of tears, I had my blessing. Thus, begun the process of ‘living’ as the next Cayetana Navarro, a weighty responsibility. Voluntarily taking on the name of a revered and almost mythical family member meant taking on the mantel of living up to all that name means in your family: a relentless work ethic, ferociously proud of her heritage, and the center of her family.
Now about that dream. As I mentioned at the outset, I had been working with my therapist for about a year when suddenly, I had the recurring dream again but it was wildly different in some incredible ways. This time, it began in the actual home I’m living in now and I was in the backyard which is close to a watershed. It had rained particularly hard and so I could see where some of the soil had eroded enough to expose what looked like some kind of wall. I start digging, wondering how far down it will go. Before I know it, I have dug down the equivalent of another story to a basement level foundation.
After working to clear all the dirt away from this wall, I discover a door that opens into a completely furnished (circa 1970s) room with a cosy bed, bookshelves, and a fireplace. I’m enormously excited by this and run to tell my husband that we have this totally separate room under the house we could use. Strangest of all? I was only able to access this room after excavating through all that accumulated dirt to get to this one door. The interpretation is pretty obvious, no?
Shortly after I decided on my name, I had the dream again for what may be the last time. In this version, the house is now much brighter and open. And this time, it’s basically a huge wing of an existing house but in the back. Again, it’s fully furnished but it isn’t so much hidden as just unused. This dream begins with me in the very back going through all the stuff that has been left behind by this unknown prior owner, trying to decide what I actually want to keep and what I want to get rid of. Part of me feels bad about throwing out what looks like perfectly good stuff but I also want to start fresh and only keep a few really valuable things. Douglas comes in and says to junk all of it. But I tell him, I just want to start in the very back and work my way back to the front. And then, I say, we can re-do the rooms the way we want.
The story doesn’t end here. A friend asked me what Cayetana means, thinking it might be something ancient like “Makes Wonderful Food” or “Snores Loudly.” I confessed I had no idea. “It’s just a name!” I say. But he presses, so I grab my phone and start googling, as we do. What I found made my jaw drop. Starting with Cayetana on Wikipedia led me to an entry on Cayetano where I learn it’s the Spanish name related to the Italian name, Gaetano which itself is derived from the Latin, Caietanus which means “from Gaeta.” Clicking ‘Gaeta’ seems to be the end of the story. Gaeta is an ancient city that still exists on the coast about 75 miles from Rome. But then, skimming the section on the city’s ancient history, I read the following:
Inhabited by the Oscan-speaking Italic tribe of the Aurunci at least by the 10th-9th century BC, the town was an ancient Ionian colony of the Samians according to Strabo, as he believed its name stemmed from the Ancient Greek καιέτας, which means "cave", probably referring to the several harbours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaeta#Ancient_times
A cave?! Wow, I think. All those dreams, over and over, about some semi-subterranean space. But then I keep reading.
Gaetani speak a dialect of Italian that, while similar to the nearby Neapolitan, is one of the few Italian dialects to preserve Latin's neuter gender.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaeta#Culture
Neuter. Meaning, literally, not either. Neither masculine nor feminine. At this point, I decided I’d gone far enough down the rabbit hole! But like Alice in Wonderland, it just got ‘curiouser and curiouser.’
Just recently, I made an impromptu visit to Texas to celebrate an uncle’s 80th birthday. I paid a couple of visits to one of my closest and oldest childhood friends during this time and at one point, he asked the same question, “Do you know what your name means?” Thinking it was out of the same curiosity as all the others, I told him what I’d learned. But then the tables turned. He said, “Well the reason I’m asking is because that’s the region of Italy that my family is originally from. I have relatives named Gaetano. They were given land on the island of Ponza by the Bourbons who wanted to re-inhabit the ancient Roman city on the island.” The island itself has a number of grottos and caves and my friend’s family’s historical home is itself cut directly into the island rock.
As I mentioned from the outset, if I were to read this story myself, even as a work of fiction, I would think it full of too many coincidences. Too scripted! And yet, here I am amazed and gratified that I’m the lucky recipient of this remarkable story. Now that I’ve lived enough to look back and understand, I’m ready to get back to living forward.
