K.M. Lewis

Amelia Begins Again

Amelia. Yes, Amelia. That's my name. Though the sound of it gives me pause. Like it never really fit. The great Dale Carnegie said, "Names are the sweetest and most important sound in any language." My Hospitality Management professor once told us that hearing the sound of one's own name is the most precious sound to a person (which is why we require service agents to say a customer's name in their interactions). But I always had trouble with mine. Seriously. Always. I have vivid memories of lying to my classmates in kindergarten about my last name, for instance. It wasn't my father's, or my grandmother's (whom I lived with), or even my mother's at that point. It was my mother's maiden name. And I was the only one in my vicinity that carried that god-awful thing. Tunstall. Pronounced "tuhn-stuhl." Ugh. Worse, I'm not called by my first name. Hell, or even my middle name, really! Kaslynn Amelia Tunstall was called Milly. What in the 1984 hell was going on? Anyway, the fact was - and still is- my name was never a sweet or precious sound to me. Instead, a reminder that no one could quite figure out who I was supposed to be, which remains problematic some thirty+ years later.