Ms. Darling

She became a teacher mostly to escape the curse of her first name. Mildred Darling. It had always sounded like a Victorian pun to her. By becoming Ms. Darling, she bisected herself and blotted out a half. The lesser half. That molding, dreadful joke of a name that lived between MILD and MILDEW. She never forgot, standing tip toed at the ponderous, gilded Oxford English Dictionary at her Elementary school library. Looking for her name and finding Mildew, instead. "A thin whitish coating consisting of minute fungal hyphae, growing on plants or damp organic material such as paper or leather."

Ms. Darling had spent her life afraid to be that whitish coating, the sordid disappointment of finding a plastic bag full of clothes wet from a trip to the beach two days past, ruined by carelessness.

But Ms. Darling, now, was faced with filling the shoes of her family name, the part of her identity she'd never given much thought to. Partly because to her it had always sounded like a

Use of terms of endearment can reveal little or nothing about the true quality of the relationship in question, she'd read once. Names were the same. Revealed little or nothing. Yet we carry them our whole lives. The weight of that.