On Shedding a Name Like Dead Skin
But with less itching
1. THE NAME WAS NEVER MINE
For fifty years, I carried my father’s name like a locked trunk I couldn’t open. Every byline, every contract, every school form for my daughter—a scratch at the padlock.
I thought if I piled enough achievements inside, he’d finally hand me the key.
Published 20 books? "Why not a real publisher?"
Bought a house in Japan? "Could’ve been a condo in Maui."
Started a magazine? "Your content is embarrassing."
The trunk stayed shut. He took the key with him to his grave.
2. THE PAPER TRAP
Legally, I’m still [REDACTED]. The bureaucracies of three nations cling to it:
Passports that demand lineage like a receipt.
Bank accounts that tally worth in commas and zeros.
My daughter’s birth certificate—a hostage note I couldn’t rewrite without a judge’s permission.
Baoism whispers: "The sacred is what slips through their fingers."
So I kept their paperwork. And burned everything else. The name is still there, it’s still on some of my work, but it’s not me. Not any more. It will take time, but by the time I die, I plan to be completely divorced from it.
3. FAMILIAS IS A PIRATE FLAG
I stole this name from:
An Iberian anarchist pirate’s long lost memoir.
A misheard line in a Tom Waits song.
The look on my daughter’s face when I told her "We can be our own country."
It means:
Nothing (to the census-takers).
Everything (to the crows outside Satoshi Manor, who recognize me by my bowler derby hat, not my bureaucratic filings).
4. THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP THE NAME
The men who still bear it:
My siblings, cousins, and other relatives some of who carry no blood attachment to it.
My uncle, who is the one person I feel has done justice to the name.
The ghosts in old photos, all collar starch and dead eyes.
They carry the name like an empty cup—nothing to pour, everything to prove.
I chose a different inheritance.
5. A PIRATE’S ADVICE TO HIS DAUGHTER
"The world will try to name you. To tax you. To ink you into their ledgers.
Let them. Then plant gardens in the margins where their pens can’t reach.
When they shout [REDACTED], turn your head.
Answer only to the wind, the crows, the foxes, and the stories we’ve smuggled between us. You have no middle name, so the middle name is the one that you choose. The one that counts.
And if the bureaucrats come?
Show them your palms—smeared with soil and engine grease.
Tell them you’re nobody’s scribe.
Tell them you’re mine."
I am…indignified,
CD Familias
Satoshi Manor
Otaru, Japan
POSTSCRIPT:
The birch tree out back has no papers beside it’s bark.
It grows anyway.
(Comments open to those shedding their own dead skin.)