Nod your head if three or more of the following apply to you:

• College graduate
• Employed
• Half of a couple
• Mortgage holder
• Parent

Nod again if, despite acquiring all these trappings of adulthood, you still

There's no fiddlin' with tradition.

don’t quite feel grown up.

To me, if often seems like the true benchmarks of our lives occur unexpectedly. You add up the sum of the parts above, and it equals an adult. But the truth of the matter really crystallizes in specific, isolated moments.

Take parenthood, for instance. While I remember the births of both my children in vivid detail, neither was attended by the blend of awe, fear, humility and hope that parenthood was reported to inspire.

But certain mundane moments conferred precisely that ton-of-bricks mix. Like when we moved our first child from his high chair to a booster seat at the table. Wham. Seeing our then almost two-year-old child right there at the table with us hit me square in the gut. In that moment, I got it. We were a family.

I recalled that moment this week as I sized up that table, wondering about squeezing 11 people around it. Another Adult Moment is in the offing. This Thanksgiving, at age 40, for the first time in my life, I won’t be eating my mom’s turkey.

Forty years is a long time to stick with a tradition, even a holiday one. I have celebrated away from my mom’s table. In the early 90s, when I worked as a newspaper reporter in other states and never got the Friday after off, my family came to me. But Mom always toted the turkey along, too.

My brother got married in 1998, and five years later, I followed. Traditions often shift as family members do. But ours endured. Neither of our spouses had a family Thanksgiving tradition. Since my mom lives almost exactly halfway between us, her place is a sensible and equitable destination.

In 2002 my father’s death further cemented the status quo. We packed up first one kid, then two, then three – now five kids between my family and my brother’s – and continued to head over the river and through the woods so Mom wouldn’t be alone on Thanksgiving.

Not this year, though. My brother’s family decided to stay home first. Meanwhile, my snowbird in-laws are delaying this year’s departure. It’s the first chance we’ve had to spend a major holiday with them, so we decided to stay put, too. My mom – who’s indicated that, after 40 years in a row, she’s not too sorry to skip cooking – will head to her sister’s.

I’m excited about a new tradition. It’s probably overdue. Yet at the same time, it conjures up my adult imposter anxieties. There’s no way 11 people will fit around that table. We don’t have a turkey roasting pan. The under-15 set that will comprise half the guests will likely turn up their noses at the traditional menu, making us wonder why we’re bothering.

Yet sometime early Thanksgiving evening, maybe when we’re cleaning up, I expect another gut-level whammo. One down. Thirty-nine to go.

Image credit: Hale Centre Theatre

I love Lucy.

Not that Lucy. The eponymous ditzy redhead character portrayed by Lucille Ball could hardly be more different than the Lucy I’m talking about: Lucy Stone, the first recorded American woman to retain her own name after marriage.

Actually, I don’t really love this Lucy, who died 116 years ago today.

Lucy Stone, the first American woman to use a maiden name after marriage. Image: Wikipedia

Rather,  as another married woman who’s demurred from adopting a husband’s name, I hold an abiding respect and appreciation for her. And as name pioneers go, I flatter myself as a kind of 21st century cousin.

When my daughter was born a year ago, my husband and I gave her my last name. Her four-year-old brother, meanwhile, has his last name. They each have the other parent’s last name as their middle moniker. So we parents, Cari Noga and Mike Henderson, have as offspring Owen Noga Henderson and Audrey Henderson Noga.

It’s different, to be sure. We’ve fielded some flak over it, mostly well-meaning inquiries about whether we’d considered that this might confuse the kids – and, to my ears, implying that’s exactly what we’d be doing.

Au contraire, I say. Indeed, it deviates from the U.S. norm. But if the kids are raised with this as their norm, there’s no place to sow confusion.  That question is also cloaked in the patriarchal stereotypes we’re trying to shrug off. No one objected that our son would be confused because he and I didn’t share a name. So why should our daughter feel confused about not sharing one with her dad?

After a year of living with it and writing about it (my personal blog explores the anomaly of having two kids with the same, married parents but different last names. OK, and a cute-kid picture now and then. I’m only human.) I’m ready to take the next step: advocacy for name choice equality. As this Salon article from 2000 puts it, why should a baby get the father’s last name? At the very least, can we think about why it’s the automatic choice for almost everyone? Other than that it’s expected and easy, there’s no real reason.

Admittedly, it’s uphill trudging. The most generous estimates I’ve seen say that only 10 percent of American women keep their names upon marrying, making for a small pool to persuade.  But the importance of the advocacy piece was reinforced for me this summer.

In August, researchers from Indiana University and the University of Utah presented to the American Sociological Association their findings that 71 percent of Americans they surveyed believe it’s better for women to change their surname upon marriage. In addition, fully half supported government regulation requiring name change. (See UPI piece and Times of India story.)

“It was a little shocking to see,” said Laura Hamilton, one of the study authors and a Ph.D candidate at Indiana. (Read more about the study, “Mapping Gender Attitudes with Views Toward Marital Name Change” and my interview with Hamilton on my personal blog.)

Shocking, indeed, are such value judgments about what should be a woman’s private, individual choice. It’s also evidence how hard it is, even 116 years after Lucy Stone, to swim against the tide.

But, like Nemo, I’ll just keep swimming. After all, while patriarchal tradition has prevailed the last few centuries in most of the Western world, it isn’t this way everywhere. When I first broached this idea to my husband, he started doing genealogical research and found that ancient Scots – a dominant strain in his ancestry – gave daughters their mothers’ names, while sons received their fathers’. Some Native American tribes and Jewish denominations, to name some found right here in the U.S.A., practice matrilineal traditions, where one’s lineage is traced through the mother.

Let me talk about my husband’s reaction to the idea more. He’s an open-minded guy, but I wondered if this would just be too far out there.
Initially, he did hesitate, because he wanted our kids to share a last name. But I asked him to keep thinking about it. As he did, I got more invested in the idea for what I think it teaches both our kids.

We’re providing a crystal clear, living lesson of what we believe about family: Mom and dad are equally important influences in their lives.

So, from my cyber-soapbox, I make my pitch to you. Think about it a matrilineal name. Talk about it with your husband. (Or, husbands, with your wives.) Block out tradition, the questions from family members, all the white noise that obscures what really matters. Then, just do it.

Erica wears her birthing necklace. Each bead was hand-picked by her closest friends and family as part of the Blessingway ceremony at her baby shower.

When I got the invitation to my dear friend Erica’s baby shower, I must admit that I rolled my eyes a little. Along with the standard date, time, location information, I was to take the scrapbook paper enclosed and use each side – one for Erica and one for BBH (Baby Boy Harbison) – to write a blessing for each. Then, when I came to the party, I was to bring a bead that would be strung on a necklace… the invitation said it was a Native American tradition of some sort.

I didn’t know the event organizer all that well, so had no idea what to expect. But, regardless, there was no chance I’d miss out on participating. Erica and I have been friends for a decade – since our undergraduate days at the University of Oregon – and she’s had a rough year. I would be there, I would swallow my cynicism and be a part of whatever was in store.

What I experienced with Erica and the other women in her life with whom she’s close was tremendously meaningful. Rather than being giggly and goofy about the impending bundle of joy, we spent the time celebrating Erica and the bond she has with her friends and family.

This focus was particularly important for Erica - and really for each of us who were there. Erica and her husband split-up when she was three months pregnant and she was approaching her due date as not only a single mom to her almost-three-year-old, but now a newborn, too.

We all had the opportunity to let Erica know how much we loved her, supported her and were there for her every step of the way. Many tears were shed as we each read our blessings to Erica and her baby and explained why we chose the bead that we brought that day.

I’ll let Erica share, here, too:

My friends created a day that was so deeply moving. Their blessings reminded me how strong our friendship is, and that I am never alone. It also reminded me to remember I am a strong person, and how lucky my boys are to have me as their mom.

As Moms, we don’t often stop and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. Thank goodness for good friends to write it down so we can read it over and over again, lest we have a lapse again. Needless to say, I was a tearful mess as each friend read aloud what she had written for me, and as they explained how they picked the special bead. I’ll treasure the beads, which will be strung on a necklace that I plan to wear often. Each is so different, beautiful and full of special significance, just like my friends, and reflects the attributes they see in me as their friend or daughter and as a mom. I couldn’t have asked for a more amazing day.

It was a truly amazing day that created an even stronger bond of friendship between us and I’m honored to have been a part. Erica has since welcome Aaron Ryder to her world. A happy, healthy baby boy with an amazing mom with an equally amazing circle of support.

What I found doing some research for this post, is this baby shower alternate is called a Mother’s Blessing or Blessingway and the necklace, a birthing necklace. If you want to know more about hosting this kind of reaffirming (and truly meaningful) event for a woman in your life, you can check out these resources:

• Canadian Women’s Health Network – The Blessingway: An alternative baby shower
• A Mother Blessing: An Alternative to a Baby Shower
• Bella Maternity Services – Blessing Ways