Charles Salzberg

When my mother died several years, it fell upon me to clean out the apartment where she’d lived since the early 1940s. Sifting through years of accumulated papers, family photos, and even journals my mom kept when she was in her late teens and early 20s,  I found something I never knew existed: a baby book with my name on it.   In it, my mother recorded every notable event—first words, first steps, my height and weight during the first three years of my life, my illnesses, various vaccinations.  Nothing extraordinary.  Until…

There it was. A secret that had been hidden from me all these years.  My mother, at least until I reached the age of 6 months, was not referring to me as Charles, but as “Butch.”

It may seem trivial.  But to me, it was monumental.  Why?  Because I’d always hated my name.  It was way too formal.  It sounds like a butler.  Or a prince (yes, I know, in fact it is a prince).  And the nicknames aren’t much better.  Charlie?  My grandmother once warned me, “Don’t let anyone ever call you Charlie.  It sounds like an old prospector.”  Chuck?  It’s more a verb than a name.  Chaz?  Like in Bono?  No thanks.

But Butch!  Oh, how my life would have been different if I’d been called Butch.  I would have been tougher, more self-confident, not the shy, uncertain child I was.  And I certainly would have been bigger than my five-foot-nine 160-pound frame.

And so, at least for the first six months of my life, my mother was indulging in a quiet act of rebellion, since it was my father’s choice obviously foisted upon her against her will.  She was referring to me with a different name, perhaps not the name she actually wanted me to have, something other than Charles. 

I’m still Charles and I guess I always will be, but once, even for a brief moment in time, I was Butch.  And that means something to me.