The only name I'm keeping from the ones I've been saddled with since birth is my last name. The first and middle names always felt weird and for a very long time, I never knew why. Now that I've finally answered that question, I've resolved to cast both of them into the fire.
I chose Cassandra as my first name mainly because it sort of calls to me. That's the best way I can put it. I also often feel like the mythical Cassandra in that a number of the predictions I have made about various things in my personal and professional life were disregarded by others...that is until they came true.
My middle name, Elizabeth, is a bit of a long story.
From the time I was a little kid up until becoming (nominally) an adult, I remember this toolbox my dad always had in the garage. In it he kept a lot of his tools from back when he was a Quality Control inspector in an aircraft plant. I only ever remember that toolbox sitting with the lid open - never closed. Well, the time came that my dad passed away and it was handed down to me. A while after I brought it home, I noticed that there was a name plate on the top of it. When I stopped for a moment and took a close look at it, I noticed that the initial for the first name was 'E' and not 'G', which it should have been if it was my dad's name. After a moment, I realized that the 'E' stood for 'Elizabeth', which was my grandmother's name (my dad's mother). I had remembered hearing that my grandmother worked in a shipyard during World War 2, and I guess I had inherited her toolbox. Needless to say, that was a bit of a mindblowing moment.
With that in mind, now about 14 years later, I decided to adopt her name as my own, both to honor her memory and draw strength from it. To work in that sort of environment during that period in history, she must have been a pretty tough broad back then!
Shortly after coming out to my mother (a whole other story still in progress), I also found out that when I was 3 years old, I almost had a little sister. I say, "almost" because sadly, she didn't survive the birth. Had she survived, she would have been named 'Elizabeth'.
