This morning I was thinking about all the people I have known in the past, with whom I have lost touch. Men carry their names with them throughout their lives, unless they choose otherwise. Women change names, sometimes several times in a lifetime. Add to that, we now live in a very mobile world, where we scatter like billiard balls on a pool table. We all end up in the pockets, some of us sooner than others.
   Until I got married for the first time, when I took on the last name of Morier,   I was known as Fay Seager in Turkey,in DC at Alice Deal Junior High, at Pax Hill finishing school for girls, (now a nursing home!)near Farnham, Surrey, England, and at Olivet College in Michigan. I was terribly shy in those years and did not make friends easily, but I do remember a few friends, many of whom I have lost track of, from those years.
   As Fay Morier, I and my girls  lived in 13 places following my husband around, before buying our first home where my girls and I lived for 15 years. (Most of that time as Pallaria.) There I taught art in the Northumberland School District and at the White Mountains Regional High School in New Hampshire.
   Studying for my Master’s thesis in Expressive Therapy from Lesley College, (now Lesley University) My confidence grew and I very fondly remember people in my Core group, where I was known as Fay Pallaria .
   Slowly over the years, especially since getting on Facebook, I have connected with a few old friends, but matters got complicated when I not only took back my surname but also my first name, and morphed into Charlotte Seager!
   But I am getting ahead of myself. After taking back my surname I was known as Fay Seager for a while at Sancta Sophia seminary school. (can’t find it on the internet anymore!), in Fayetteville Arkansas helping Rev.Gloria Young with her church, at the Anzara Cloyd retreat center in Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee(it folded), and as librarian in Gainesboro Tennessee.
   I have had many adventures since then that have taken Charlotte Seager places where I am still remembered and where I am still in contact with friends, including Northport, Michigan and back again in Tennessee.
   Perhaps you have kept the name you were known by in childhood and still have your childhood friends. You are lucky. I believe it is especially important for women to keep their surname after marriage, as some of my friends have done. How do you look up an old friend on Facebook if she has changed her name and no longer lives where she used to live? It can be very lonely cut off from your old friends, especially as you get older and you start losing family members. Take heed, ladies. Keep your name!