What A Name Carries
Mira asked her mother, on the flight home, the only question that mattered.
"Mum. Why did you name me Mihaela? I know it was for grandma. But — what did you want me to know about her?"
Her mother thought for a long time. Her mother was a careful talker. Her mother had — Mira had always known — a different and longer relationship with words, because Romanian and English were both her languages and she chose between them deliberately.
"I named you Mihaela," her mother said, "because my mother was the bravest person I have ever known, and I wanted you to walk through the world with her name on you. I did not name you Mihaela because I expected you to be her, or to use her name. I named you Mihaela so that the name was *available* to you. So you could pick it up if you ever wanted it. And so that, when she died, the name would not die. That was important to me."
"I shortened it."
"I know."
"You never said anything."
"It was your name. You were eleven. You wanted to fit in at a new school. I understood that. I did, too, when I came to England — I went by *Maria* for the first two years because nobody could say *Mariana*. Names are tools, Mira. They serve the person carrying them. They are not — promises."
"But it feels — it feels different now. Now that she's gone."
Her mother nodded slowly.
"Because now the name is the only Mihaela left. Yes. I felt the same when she