about

I’ve been a lot of things in my lifetime, but my favorite has always been me.

In kindergarten, I was dubbed “Jenny K.” because the year I was born was a very popular year to name your daughter Jennifer–a name that never made sense to me. For me, the name “Jennifer” was a permanent experience of semantic satiation, syllables that meant nothing and sounded like meaningless babble. No offense to the stalwart Jennifers of the world–I simply couldn’t make sense of it. But I never really felt like a Jenny, either.

Despite valiant efforts to find a name that suited me–Liz, Jo, Meg, or pretty much any one of the March sisters, I couldn’t seem to find a name that did feel like me, so I shrugged my shoulders in 6th grade and directed all of my friends and teachers to refer to me as “Jenna.” Jenna was way cooler than I was, a world traveler who could speak three languages, owned a Morgan horse, and published novels. Since I could barely speak Spanish, had only been on one trail ride on an overworked and underfed Quarter horse, and had only won one writing contest in my life, Jenna never really took, so I remained Jenny K.–as if it were a two-name first name: “Jenny Kay,” or “Ava Mae” or “Rita Jo.” It was fine, I guess. I liked Jenny K. She was the uninhibited one who belted karaoke at parties and laughed too loudly and wasn’t afraid to snort.

Still, when I went to college, I thought it was time to try being “Jen.” Just Jen. Jen was an introspective free agent who ran in different circles every weekend. Jen was a savvy traveler who conquered Italy, France, Spain, and the Czech Republic. Jen was a chainsmoker who stayed up until dawn writing epic tomes. Jen then became an unencumbered mom, one who believed traveling with young children made everyone more resilient, that the world’s expectations for women and mothers were useless parameters that kept women boxed in and hidden from their children. Jen believed life should be simple, even if it was hard.

And then Jen got divorced, and remarried, and tried reinventing herself and ended up more like revisiting herself, and she honestly loved being called both Jenny and Jen, and didn’t even mind using Jennifer if she needed to be really serious about things.