To (e) or not to (e)…that is the question.

I believe a girl should have options. In naming, in being, in life. Because one day she may need to trade in those contacts and her pair of “all-the-rage” but never really fit her long-legs well anyhow Guess? jeans for a pair of horned-rimmed spectacles and a thrift-store sweater-set (ala librarian chic). So if I had it my way, you’d be Estella. Or rather (e)stella (which ee cummings and Gertrude Stein would like very much, thank you). Estélla Story Mulholland, with an accent on the second e. And we’d call you Stella, and La La and Stelli and Stelly Bean and excepting your birth certificate, which only the folks at the airport security check point read, no one would even know about the (e). Silent and parenthetical it could hide on the document, dormant, until twelve or thirteen or twenty-three years from now, when needing an alias, a trip to France, a reinvention of your tomboyish surfing self, you could, if you desire, call attention to that (e). You could print it out in straight lines in front of that curvaceous “S” and become Esteé, or Estelle, or in sharp contrast to your brother, East. And you could live for five years, or ten, with that bold E, coming out of its parentheticals, and then, later, when you’ve worn it out and settled down some, when land a job as Editor-in-Chief of French Vogue, or landed on the moon, you could revert back to the comfort and security of Stella. But I’m advocating the (e) or the E, because really, a girl should have options.