Soledad
Michelle is my middle name, my legal first name is Soledad. I was named after my Abuelita (Abuelita is Spanish for “Little Grandma”). I have struggled to embrace this name, it never quite fits right, like an outfit you want to love because it looks great on the hanger but then when you wear it, it hangs on your curves in all the wrong ways. It doesn’t match your style, it’s a leather jacket but you’re more of a trenchcoat person. That’s how the name Soledad feels, I keep returning to it and trying to make it fit.
The wonderful thing about Spanish as a language is that you pronounce every letter, words basically sound how they look. French has extra silent letters in it, Dutch has letters that are pronounced opposite to English or are strangely guttural (I’m looking at you Dutch “i” “e” and “g”). Spanish, oh it’s easy to pronounce, I love the roll of the “rrrrrrr’s” and the playfulness as you sound out every letter and add emotion for emphasis. But damn, those verb conjugations really ruin my ability to be fluent. The name “Soledad” sounds how it looks “Soul-E-Dad” or “Soul-eh-Dad” I’ve heard it both ways. Below is a YouTube on how to pronounce the word.
YouTube video that shares how to pronounce the word Soledad. The video says it’s a word in Spanish for loneliness, however, it is also used as a name.
MOM, WHY DID YOU NAME ME THAT?
I remember being seven or so, sitting in the back seat of my Mom’s car as she was driving to the post office and asking her, “What does Soledad mean?”
She said, “It means Lonely Sun”
“That’s sad, why did you name me that?”
“Your father wanted to name you after his mother.”
“Why do you call me Michelle?”
“Because I like the name Michelle. If you were a boy I would have named you Michael after my favorite actor Michael Landon, but you are a girl so it’s Michelle.”
That’s the moment when I learned I was named after someone. You see, my Mom left my Dad when I was three years old. She returned to Canada and cut contact between me and my Mexican family. It’s important to note that I didn’t have contact or know my Mexican family after the age of three, so when I would get snippets of information about them from my Mom, I held onto them like pearls connecting me to the mysterious other half of my identity.
This connection to my Abuelita created this woman who I often wondered about. Were we alike, did sharing a name mean we also shared other traits? Who was she? Why did my Dad want to name me after her?
MEETING MY NAMESAKE
The interesting thing about my Mom is that she didn’t want to talk to me about my Mexican family and she actively prevented me from knowing them. Yet, she regularly sent my Tías (Aunts) letters, she regularly sent the family photos of my sister and I throughout the years. Once in a while, I would see mail from a Mexican, there was the birthday when a big box arrived with what looked like a Catholic schoolgirl outfit, there was the letter from my Tío Cesar which included a photo of him and his girlfriend, and there was a phone call from my Dad where my Mom told him never to call again and hung up on him. There was proof of life and a gatekeeper.
At 16, I had enough. I went into my Mom’s office and I wrote down every Mexican address she had listed in her Address book. I proceeded to write letters to my Dad and sometimes to my uncle (since I had his name too) and send them to the addresses. Whoever’s address this was, they would know him and they would get the letter to him. And time and time again the letter would come back to me or go unanswered. It had been years since the last mail from the Mexicans so I didn’t even know if any of them were still at that address but I didn’t give up.
My letters all went something like this -
“This is Michelle, my Dad is Victor and I’m looking for him. I don’t live with my Mom anymore, I live with….so he can call me at this number ####. I would really like to know him. Please give this letter to him, he can also write to me at this address …”
One of those letters finally worked. I was 17 and out with a friend when I missed the call. I was living with Grandpa Jean and Sylvia in Calgary at the time. They excitedly told me a man from Mexico had called while I was out and that he would call again that evening at a specific agreed upon time. That man was my Dad. It was the end of April or beginning of May, he would call me once a week and by the time I graduated high school (middle of June) I was set to fly to Mexico to meet him and the whole Mexican family.
When I arrived at the airport, it was my Dad and Abuelita who picked me up. They were the first members of the family that I would meet. Then it turned out that I was planned to stay the summer at my Abuelos (Grandparents) house not with my father. Abuelita and Abuelo did not speak English, seriously not a single word, my Dad could speak pretty good English, he might have been a little rusty but he was decent. I had prepared for this moment for many years, I had been taking Spanish class since grade eight, that’s 5 years of high school Spanish classes. Well, dear readers, that barely scratched the surface!
That summer, I was living with my namesake. I was watching her closely. I needed to answer those questions - Did we have more in common? Did a name bring out shared traits? - in fairness, I was looking at everyone trying to figure out if I shared anything with this long lost family.
Abuelita, the OG Soledad was -
moody and looked grumpy most of the time
would get mad at me for slights that I didn’t understand, Mexican culture stuff I didn’t know
was REALLY close with my Dad. He had some serious Momma’s boy energy and I didn’t understand that either
My initial impression was that I didn’t like being named after her, that the one thing I did have in common with her was being moody and that wasn’t a quality I was all that proud of 😂. Thankfully, I had a whole summer with her and I started to see more positive things we had in common and more positive traits about her.
Abuelita, the OG Soledad also -
a really good cook, she also liked to sing off-key while cooking or doing dishes in the kitchen. This is something I also love to do! She was really into the song, Lady Laura by Roberto Carlos, I always think of her in the Kitchen singing this song when I hear it.
always had a fruit salad prepared for me in the fridge, so when I would wake up my favorite breakfast was ready and waiting. Even when I visited again two years later, the first morning I woke up the fruit salad was waiting for me. This gesture made me feel incredibly loved.
always had family and friends coming to see her, her house was the hub of family activity. It started to make sense why, I was staying there that summer, it was family central.
loved animals. She had a parrot the first visit then a lot of dogs.
a businesswoman. She had this convenience shop in her front yard and she also sold hot meals to the guys who worked up at the corner gas station.
We had language barriers but her actions shone through, I could see what a strong woman she was and how loved she was, I could feel how much she loved me.
SOLEDAD, LET’S TRY THIS!
In my first year of college, I was registered for all my classes with my legal name. They did roll call for Soledad and it occurred to me, what if I don’t correct them, what if I just went by Soledad? Now, would be the perfect time to make the switch. I didn’t know anyone in my college classes so I could start a new life as Soledad. That’s what I attempted.
I was ready to embrace the name. I finally knew my Mexican family and I finally felt like I could hold a Mexican name.
It turns out, I don’t instinctively respond to the name. You know when you grow up with a name that even when you think you might have heard someone say your name, your ears prickle, you look around to confirm if indeed someone was trying to get your attention. That feeling, that prickle of recognition, did not exist for me when it came to Soledad.
My new college friends would share that they saw me somewhere and called my name, Soledad, to get my attention, and I would keep on walking…oblivious.
I’m also deaf, at this time in one ear, so there’s a chance this was also the problem.
Sometime halfway through the year, I realized it wasn’t working, I was not a Soledad, it didn’t feel right and so I started telling new people I was Michelle outside of college. That year was confusing, to some people I was Soledad and to others I was Michelle. Maybe this experiment would have worked better if I told my family to call me Soledad and all my lifelong friends, but I didn’t 😂. Can I just say being 18 is a hilarious time in one’s life!
So the experiment failed and thankfully I wasn’t continuing my studies after that year, those new acquaintances wouldn’t be in my life either. Soledad was done.
MY YEAR OF SOLEDAD
I grew up understanding that my name meant “Lonely Sun☀️”
It also means solitude and loneliness.
The year I went backpacking in Latin America, my Dad would be beside himself with worry. I was 23 and traveling by myself. Hell, the Mexican family barely let me walk two blocks to the internet cafe by myself when I would stay with them. So trekking across South and Central America was wild!
I would laugh and say to him, you probably shouldn’t have named me Soledad, it’s in my name to do things alone. I called my time backpacking, my year of Soledad, like year of solitude. It was also the year I had decided not to get into a relationship, to heal from back to back relationships and heal the resulting baggage. One year of solitude would do it!
I may not like the name for myself however, I grew to appreciate the imagery of the Lonely Sun. I resonate with the symbolism of the sun being independent, blazing its own path, and finding strength in itself.
I felt very connected to the imagery of the lonely sun while backpacking. I even considered getting a tattoo of an Aztec-style sun on my foot to represent that year of solitude.
THE SUN HAS THE MOON
The year of solitude where it represented my single womanness ended before the backpacking part of my solitude journey ended. My single-woman solitude ended with the calendar year.
We were on a hike in the jungle, these five Dutch guys and I. They decided to explore further up the river stream, I decided to stay back and swim and hang out. When they came back I was sitting on a big rock on the edge of the river bank. Then one of them, joined me on the rock and we were talking. I looked at his necklace and noticed there was a moon charm in the center.
Then this whisper of a voice came from my chest that laughed and said, “Would the universe really make it that obvious that my soulmate is the moon?”
Yes, yes the universe did.
I met the Sailor on January 20th, he bought that moon necklace in the town before we met.
SOLEDAD, THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY!
I often struggle to feel connected to my Mexican roots. I was raised Canadian and while I learned the language and some of the culture from trips to Mexico. I had more travel goals, career goals, and a husband from another country, immigration goals, and soon, it had been 10 years since I had visited the Mexican family.
What surprised me the most about feeling less Mexican was when I changed my name. When I got married I took The Sailors last name. I wanted a family that had the same last name, that would feel unified, I didn’t want to feel like the lonely sun among a family of moons. Instead, I realized that the most obvious signifier of my Mexicaness was gone. My maiden name is very Mexican. Most people don’t even think I look Mexican anymore, which is sad because I really do look like a light-skinned version of my cousins and a younger version of my Abuelita.
Not having the opportunity to know my Mexican family while growing up has been a huge loss. This past two weeks, Abuelita, my namesake, passed away. Now, there’s only one Soledad and I don’t feel like I even got to know the original as much as I wish I had.
I always wanted to ask her to teach me to cook Mexican food, so I could make amazing authentic Mexican meals. So I could have some Mexican family recipes in my repertoire. But I waited too long and I was too shy to ask when I did live with her.
The interesting thing is, nowadays, we would call what my Mom did to my Dad as parental kidnapping. My Mom would never call it that. These days, I’m in my own intercultural relationship and I know there are agreements that can be made to share custody between parents in different countries. It would have taken open communication, planning, and most of all a prioritized effort to raise a child so they know their roots, their culture on both sides. Because I am mixed, I am both Canadian and Mexican. But I lost that part of me, I lost the chance to grow up in and among Mexicans, to learn the culture in a way that seems only possible during your early years. All it would have taken was for my Mom and Dad to take turns paying for me to fly down during summer breaks to spend months with the Mexicans. I can imagine what a big difference it would have been to spend the summers with Abuelita at family centrale.
Maybe then, I wouldn’t have struggled with a name that didn’t quite fit.