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From the earliest I can remember, I’ve had some sort of interest in taking my name--myself; my identity--and committing it to paper, in the most perfect penmanship I could muster.  When I was little--truly little--that took on a blocky, almost Aegean quality:  two conjoined, sideways triangle for the E; four vertical triangles for the two Ms;  a single triangle, plus one long, sure, horizontal line for the A, written in determined red marker.  And then, when I thought of an A as an Auh, or occasionally an Aaah, and not as a tepee with legs, I decided that letters were not enough.  I wanted Victoria’s square print that she concentrated on, her head centimeters away from her loose-leaf.  Then I grew tired and my neck grew sore and I decided that I wanted Tessa’s tiny lines, her perfectly rounded dots above half-completed highways.  

Writing my name in the margins of my notebook or on a dinner napkin read as “compulsive” to some people, but there  was--is--something about writing the truth--simple facts--that resonate(d)(s) with me.  People told me not to write in books, but to me, there was something about taking that ownership over one of my properties, and writing, clearly, This book belongs to Emma Jane, that was almost as sacred as reading the book itself.

There is something comforting about seeing your name--not in print--but in ink.  Ultimately, we are our names, and our names are us.  Take the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC--what is more personal, more lasting, and more true than our written names? My parents and I moved out of my childhood home in seventh grade.  We were cleaning out the back cravases of my closet when we saw one last doodle in Apartment 3D.  In one tiny corner, written in secretive thin purple marker, all crooked and determined, was a single sentence that read: My name is Emma Jane Gulley and I will never leave this house.