Creating a new family.

When Gilles and I married in the US last year, I was loath to change my last name to his, for reasons both good – a strong identity with the name that has grown to represent “me”; my professional reputation and credentials built up around that name – and … well, if not bad, then silly – I was too lazy to be bothered filling out all the related post-name-change paperwork; I like when people remark on the association of my initials with a certain lovable extra-terrestrial. So I didn’t.

In the US, I had that choice to keep the name of the maiden I was. In Switzerland, a woman who marries does not: she can take her husband’s name, or she can add his to hers for a double-barreled appellation. (For all its progressivity on other social issues, this country is not among the most feminist in the world.) There are possible exceptions to this when the woman is a foreigner (like me) and the couple marries in that foreign jurisdiction (like us), in which case the woman’s name may be, but will not necessarily be, determined by the laws of that country. So until the last minute before sending in our marriage recognition paperwork to the Swiss authorities, I was planning to advocate for staying as I was. As who I was.

But before running down to the mailbox, I hesitated, opened the envelope, removed the letter in which I’d put my years of legal training to good use arguing that my name should remain my name, and added his last name after my own on the paperwork. There. Fine. I wouldn’t use it, but I’d let this country assign me that name.

The day after that terrible Monday, I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I sat in front of the computer for hours, searching for answers, for the right answer. I couldn’t find it; of course not, it wasn’t there; it didn’t exist; it never will. I set up a new email account using his last name after my own and wrote to him, saying that I would use this new name – the one of who I had become; the one of who we had become – to feel closer after what happened. “I'm creating a new family.”

“So nice, so perfect, I love you so much,” he wrote back.

Then I shut the computer and went outside into the cold winter sun and walked by the cold winter lake where the only warmth I felt came from the tears burning the skin of my cheeks and the cold winter comfort of forging our new family in name only when we should have been forging it in flesh.