Friday, December 5, 2014

What's in a name: Madeline or Madeleine

For the first twelve years of my life, I was taught to spell my name Madeline O'Connor by the Nuns. It was not until I went home to begin schooling in the sixth grade at St. Benedict's in Highland Park, Michigan and began living with my real folks that I learned from my father that I had been spelling my legal name differently.  He peered over my shoulder as I was working on an assignment and said emphatically, "that is not how you spell your name."  "It is Madeleine O'Connor," he stated.

Mind you, I had had difficulty learning how to spell my name from the start.  I recall being taught in the first grade, Madeline O'Connor and not having spelled my name all summer by the second grade spelling my name Madeline Oconnor and being asked, "don't you know how to spell your name?" I squirmed in my seat and quietly, said, "no."

I loved numbers and working with math.  To me, math was easy.  Math was either right or wrong, and I felt comfortable working with numbers.  Math didn't talk back to me, in other words, I was in my own zone with math.

My English instructors never gave up on me and when I had Mrs. Bennet in sixth grade, I knew I had a teacher who connected with me.  She taught me about the benefits of having a thesaurus.  I pleaded with my father to get me the book.  He did not want to spend the money at first, $25.00 I read from the jacket cover.  My father worked at J.L. Hudson's Company in Downtown Detroit and for him that was a huge expense.  Mrs. Bennet encouraged me to read, and one day I had an assignment on sharing about a book I had read.  Sometimes it could be hard to get up in front of a class, but she allowed me to tell my story using a cassette in which I recorded the story.

In sixth grade, Sr. Adaline taught me social studies and we sang songs in French.  There were times it was difficult for me to sit in class, but she allowed me to help her with the bullentin boards.

Also in sixth grade, I had Sr., (I can't remember her name, maybe because she was kind of mean), who taught math and science, my best subjects.  Sadly, that year I learned nothing in math, but maybe it was a blessing in disguise as writing allowed me to learn how to deal with things that a young mind simply could not fully understand.  The funny thing is when I took the Michigan Teacher Certification Test.  I passed all three areas:  English, math and science on the first try, but just like the old days, my scores in math and science remained higher than in English.

At one point, I discovered an old diary I wrote that went through the fifth grade and I discovered many of the letters were backwards or upside down like "e."  Though I was never formally diagnosed I struggled with dyslexia.  There were examples in this text, but I am able to catch most of the errors. My mind requires me to try to see the mistakes as an example, I wrote "backwords" instead of backwards and I caught my error before the computer had to correct me.

Computers have made my life much easier and whether you know me as Madeline, Madeleine, Maddy, MO and so many other names, I am just happy to have a name.  Legally, I have had to write my name both as Madeline and Madeleine because so many documents were produced with those versions, but if I ever have the opportunity to meet you call me by the name of your soul and your language.




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