Karen

integration, disintegration, and the space between

In 1993, with no conscious forethought, she went underground.

Public junior high school is treacherous for everyone, as it holds the terrible, awkward, puberty years, but for me it was also an entirely new culture. Even so, with my miniature cross pollination in Sunday school and gymnastics, I knew enough to know that Karen would not be safe there.

Karen was my name before I was on the outside - or - Karen was one of two names, pending my gender reveal at birth. It’s a sister of my mother’s name, Kathryn, and means ‘pure’ according to the Catholic bookmarks my grandmother would mail to me as a child. Writing this begs a question I’ve never thought to ask.

What was my boy’s name?

In all of my years of perinatal work, I have never - not once - encountered a baby Karen. Who looks at a newborn and says, “Yup! I bestow upon you the wrath of the forthcoming internet, circa 2020, where you will represent entitled whiteness.” No one. Who, having been raised surrounded by Catholic bookmarks looks down and says, “Pure feels appropriate here.”? My mama.

I was never a cute infant, and I say this on very good authority. Few photos of my first year exist, but a handful of my first weeks show an impossibly tiny human with very long fingers and toes and a truly disproportionate head. This anomaly was a family joke - an annual birthday reminder that my head was in the 95th percentile while my body was barely in the fifth.

In this context, Karen feels appropriate.

me, having done an expert job of catching up to my melon