By Grace Acosta
Roughly translated, my middle name, “Chieko,” means “Child of One Thousand Good Fortunes.” For me, this begs the questions “Am I, really?” and “Is that a sufficient number to carry me through my entire life?”
“Good fortune,” for example, can be a big ticket item like finding the right husband, which I did, or something less meaningful but not insignificant like being able to locate abandoned tennis balls in the park for Parker to chase. If I count up stuff like the former, 1,000 seems plenty, but if I include the latter, I might have cashed in all my chips by the time I hit 40.
The number 1, 000 is probably meant to convey something truly large or impressive, or spectacularly lucky, and I needn’t literally count my blessings. But the exactness of the number is hard to ignore, else why wouldn’t the name have been devised to mean something more open-ended like “Child of Countless Good Fortunes,” or even “Child of an Appropriate and Reasonable Number of Good Fortunes?”
At any given moment, I feel that I am either a very lucky person or that I am experiencing an awful but necessary transitional period, a time once described by Queen Elizabeth II as her “annus horribilis.” I would, in fact, borrow her term to describe my own last six months, but nothing I’ve experienced quite matches Prince Charles being caught on tape wishing he were Camilla’s feminine hygiene product. But look at those two now, happily married, and reasonably well-received by the British people. It seems we all ride the waves of fortune and misfortune until we get dumped on the sand for a breather. For some, the forward and back might even make life a bit more exciting.
Would I personally rather avoid having to face tough times? Is the pope Catholic? Or, as Elizabeth Gilbert writes in “Eat, Pray, Love.” “Does James Brown get down?” Who needs another challenge when after months of rain, allergy season declares, “It’s on!” and filling up a gas tank nowadays cost me more than what I paid for my last pair of running shoes? But if I’m forced to swim toward rock bottom, I drag my name with me, leaning on it for support because it reminds me that who I really am may not be reflected in my outward circumstances, if only for a temporary time.
As I progress through my middle years, I plan to embrace my name - in other words, make it less of a label and more of a mission statement. An annus horribilis flowers into an annus mirabilis, but only for the true believers - the ones who actually don’t keep track of blessings the way I do, or worry about whether or not there is enough to go around. Truly blessed people - miraculously, everlastingly, unconditionally, blessed people - remain blessed throughout the storm. They understand in the deepest way that good things don’t always come in the prettiest packages. Then, they come out on the other side hardly weathered, ready to enjoy the rest of the day, month or minute, ready to chase down tennis balls with some lucky canine friend.
Acosta is a Los Altos resident. You can contact her at noshoesplease@sbcglobal.net.
