Montauk Summer Lobster Salad

"Hi, I'm Xandy."

There is almost always a moment when people wonder if they heard me correctly.

"It's spelled with an X," I tell them before they ask. Then I smile and say, "I promise I'm not a stripper." I usually point to my chest and add, "Clearly not in the DNA."

I'd rather make the joke myself than leave someone wondering what my parents were thinking.

The truth is, I've been explaining my name for as long as I can remember.

It all started one day after school.

Mrs. Berman had given us our graduation requirements. Before we could move on to first grade, we needed to know our ABCs, count to one hundred, tie our shoes, and write our whole name.

The alphabet? Thank you, Sesame Street. Counting? Close enough. Shoelaces? My parents and I were still negotiating. Writing my whole name? Finally, something I knew I could do.

I walked into the kitchen where my mother was making dinner, pulled the colorful alphabet magnets off our harvest gold refrigerator, and proudly spelled the only name I'd ever known.

X A N D Y

I told her all I had left to do was learn to write it with a pencil.

Without turning around she said, "That's not your real name."

I remember thinking she'd misunderstood the assignment. What did she mean Xandy wasn't my real name?

Then she explained that Xandy was my nickname. My real name was Exandrea.

To a kindergartner, Exandrea Sutherland looked less like a name than excessive consonants interrupted occasionally by a vowel. I remember staring at those letters and thinking I'd be stuck in kindergarten forever while all the Lisas and Kathys marched happily off to first grade. You could've told me I'd been switched at birth and I don't think I would've been more surprised.

For the next fifty years, I never questioned the story my father told me.

According to him, he and my mother were watching a television variety show one evening in the 1960s when a little girl walked across the stage wearing a sweater with three letters across the front.

XAN.

He looked at my mother and said, "That's it."

My older sister was Kim.

My younger sister was Leigh Ann.

Apparently my parents decided being the middle daughter of three girls wasn't going to be challenging enough.

Neither of them was particularly creative, which is probably why I've come to believe the name found my father instead of the other way around. Every now and then life hands perfectly ordinary people one extraordinary moment. Maybe that was his.

Somewhere along the way I started remembering a story my father never actually told. In my imagination, those three little letters came wrapped in rhythm and swagger. I liked believing he'd wandered into another world for one evening, borrowed something unforgettable, and unknowingly brought a little of it home.

I spent half my life explaining the XAN story. Eventually I'd shrug and say, "It was the '60s. My parents must've been smoking something."

Which would've been a much better story if my teetotaling parents considered NyQuil a gateway drug.

Then COVID happened.

My mother came to stay with us.

One afternoon I was telling someone the story exactly the way I'd told it for decades when she stopped me.

"That's the wrong story."

Now she had my attention.

I opened my computer and got to sleuthing.

There it was.

The King Family.

I'd spent fifty years expecting Motown.

I got the Mickey Mouse Club.

Let's just say I'd been picturing Diana Ross.

What I got was Annette Funicello.

Somewhere between the matching outfits and the wholesome smiles, I realized I'd been supplying the soundtrack myself.

Every September after that first day of kindergarten, the school year started exactly the same way. The teacher would confidently work through the attendance sheet until she reached the bottom, study my name for another second, and before she had the chance to guess, my hand was already in the air.

"Here."

By October they could usually pronounce it.

By May they still couldn't spell it.

I've answered to X Andy, Xandi, Xaney, Zandie, Sandy, Candy, and Brandy too. One of my closest friends finally surrendered to technology. Now she simply says, "Siri, call X and Y."

My sixteenth birthday came with the greatest surprise I'd ever received. My father gave me a silver convertible. Then he decided it needed a vanity license plate that read XANDY.

Looking back, that was less a license plate than a public announcement.

Almost every Friday night somebody stole it.

Not the car.

The license plate.

Saturday mornings were spent driving all over town trying to track it down because until I found it, I was grounded.

I've never completely understood that logic.

My father picked the name.

My father picked the license plate.

Someone else stole it.

I got punished.

For years I wished I had the kind of name you could find hanging on one of those spinning racks in a gas station gift shop.

I thought that's what belonging looked like.

Looking back, I think I had it backwards.

When I was a little girl, my name felt like a burden.

Today I understand it was my birthright.

My father thought he was giving me a name.

Looking back, my father unknowingly crossed ordinary off the list before I ever had the chance to choose it.

The X was never just a letter.

It was the first mark on a map.

I thought Mrs. Berman was teaching me to write my name.

It turns out my name had been writing me all along.