Last week I received the perfect gift for my seventh wedding anniversary — from a co-worker.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

At a meeting I happened to mention this blog. She checked it out and then sent me a message: “I’m reading your blog and now I’m all confused about what I want to do re: changing my name. Hmm…”

To me, confusion is simply the predecessor to thinking, which, when considering a monumental decision like a name change, is imperative. (The sadness of post-name change regret, as I wrote in January, is magnified because it’s so easily avoided.)

I asked her what she and her significant other had been thinking of doing. “I was going to take his with mine as a middle name. Now maybe we’re both going to hyphenate,” she replied. Hooray! Not only identity preserved but equity!

Happily ever after is so much more likely when both spouses start with their identities intact. So congratulations, M. on thinking ahead, and thanks for the perfect gift.

A picture’s worth a thousand words, right? Pretty much all of them rushing through my mind following this incident while backing out of the garage yesterday morning were of the four-letter variety. (I did manage to refrain from giving voice to them, due to the four-year-old in the back seat.)

Shiza.

What galls  me most, though, is how it feels like Fate not only dealt me a raspberry, but a rotten raspberry,  one that was accompanied by a spiteful “nyah nyah nyah” just before that plastic cracked. Even before this, the morning had been  lousy. Tuesdays are already the most frantic day of the week, with the four of us  headed in four different directions instead of the usual two or three. It’s garbage day. It was raining. Owen woke up too early, gave us a throwback day on his potty-going, refusing to do it and then being whiny for a half-hour afterward. Mike had had to make a 6 a.m. grocery run for milk and was running late.

Despite all that, I stayed cool.  Mentally, I stiff-armed the prevailing cranky household mood. With Mike and Audrey out the door for daycare and work, I had an hour before I could take Owen to school and go on to work myself. In the zen zone, I emptied the dishwasher of last night’s dinner clean-up. Put the breakfast dishes away. Made lunch for Mike and Owen, and not just to score wife points. Packed my own lunch and swimming gear for my lunchtime lap workout. Filled out the school picture form. Got Owen successfully on the potty again. Managed to avoid an argument over wearing sneakers rather than the hole-int-the-sole Crocs he loves that are inappropriate on a 50-degree rainy day.  Out the door on time, congratulating myself.

And then - crack.

One of the hardest things to deal with after becoming a parent of two is how every bit of my mental reserves are sapped. Prior to kids, and even after the adjustment to the first, I always found some extra energy, patience or time to call on when everyday life  glitches and problems — like the mirror — arose.  No more. I’m drained by the simple daily routine. But on Tuesday, I was still handling it all. That’s why the mirror incident felt like such a rotten raspberry.

“I was doing it!” I silently shrieked at Fate as I yanked our stuff out of the car and transferred it to the bike trailer. (Can’t drive with the mirror banging on the door. Fortunately preschool and work are pretty close by.) “I was staying positive. I was coping. And now you hand me this?”

She didn’t answer, of course. If she did, she probably would have said, “Hey, couldn’t you have looked a little more carefully before you backed up? Especially after you snapped off the side mirror on the other car doing the exact same thing less than a year ago? ” Fate’s comforting like that.

But seriously. How do people manage to roll with the proverbial punches, especially in these times? I know this is a minor incident compared to unemployment and other recession-driven circumstances many people find themselves in now. How do you stay in the zen zone?

A week ago I sent a note to friends and family about this blog. Within 48 hours of each other, two people e-mailed polar opposite reactions. Oddly enough, considering this whole thing is about names, they share one. Since neither chose to comment publicly, I’ll preserve their privacy with a pseudonym of Kelly.

Kelly No. 1 said while it was “commendable” that I wanted to honor my father’s name, “I think it will be very confusing for your kids the way you have named them.  Why not both of them be Noga (middle) and Henderson (last).”

Kelly No. 2 wrote from Italy, where apparently women cannot take their husband’s names. She’s also coming up on her 25th high school reunion and is “baffled” that all her former classmates who married have abandoned their own names: “When I saw that you’d given you daughter your last name, I was thrilled.  You and Mike have made a wise decision.  People will adjust.  And I hope you’ve started a new trend.”

Obviously, I’m with Kelly No. 2. But Kelly No. 1’s “confusing” comment deserves to be addressed. It’s not the first time I’ve heard it. And I have multiple reactions.

• First, I think it reinforces my point that matrilineage needs intentional support. No one suggested our son might be confused because he and I had different last names. So why should our daughter be confused because hers and her dad’s are different? My husband has not shared a name with his mother for 30 years, since her remarriage. “I’m not confused about who my mom is,” he says.
• Second, I think it’s wrong, since our kids will be raised with this as the norm. Yes, it’s different, but I don’t believe that’s confusing.
• Third, the way things work now, opposite-sex siblings can expect to have different names, usually when the girl gets married. We’re just ahead of the game.

But I could be wrong. Maybe they will be confused. To that I say this: It’s still worth it. Choosing something meaningful is more important than going with convention because it’s easy and convenient. That’s a lesson we’ll make crystal clear.