Name-And-Birthdate, Please

The unknowable mysteries that we are

Every week, every day sometimes, I answer the same question over and over:

Name and birthdate? Name and birthdate? Name and birthdate?

Less a question than a statement. Bored, perfunctory. I answer it over the phone, over the check-in counter, over the nurse’s glasses as she clicks through intake tabs on the computer. The first line of questioning, the secret password that unlocks the door to the next level, the routine exchange on the walk from waiting room to patient room.

Name and birthdate. Do you want to hear a story instead? I long to stop and ask. Do you want to know how my family voted on my name? How my giddy brother held a baseball next to my raised arm, one day old and sound asleep on chubby cheeks, trying to claim I voted for his favorite? How I used to look at every hospital photo as a child and think I was loved from the beginning? 

Name and birthdate. Do you know how I discovered that the boy I was dating shared my birthday? How we were sitting on a lumpy futon in my college apartment and he slid his driver’s license out of his faded wallet to prove it to disbelieving me? How I was so skeptical that I was convinced he’d faked an ID just to trick me? How we tell the story to our kids, who used to think everyone’s parents had the same birthday? 

Name and birthdate. Have you ever realized that everyone in that waiting room behind us has a story behind them, trailing like dusty clouds in their wake? How every last one of us was once held inside another’s flesh and blood, pushed wailing or pulled forth from a wound into a waiting world, given a name and the start of a story? 

We are more than stats and facts, we know. More than our disease or disability or diagnosis. But fears fade into the background of workaday routines, 9-to-5, clock-in and clock-out, height and weight, blood pressure and temperature, name and birthdate. We want to be seen, not simply heard. We long to be known, not just named.

When we respond to your call—this tiny transaction, this quotidian currency—we are handing over more than information for verification. We are giving you ourselves, flesh-and-blood squeezed into letters and numbers. We are scared, searching humans—who picked out the clothes we wore (or let someone dress us), drove here worried (or rode while someone drove), sat there scrolling or stared into the void, hurting and hoping to hear good news. We are never the same twice. We are only here once.

So here you go, sure. You can hold it for an instant, nameandbirthdate. But know this much, I beg you. The name is mine and not-mine, given to me by people who loved me first and added-to by someone who loved me next. The date is mine and not-mine, bestowed by the unpredictable timing of birth and shared by the surreal serendipity of love. Every nameandbirthdate in that waiting room could unspool yard after yard of stories if you tug the right thread, infinite variations on the theme of life. 

Every name you call today has a story. Every birthdate you hear bears a history.

Here are our first words, names spelled in languages that span the globe. They have been called out in laughter and tears, frustration and passion, anger and delight. They have been misspelled and mispronounced, skipped over and shouted aloud, nicknamed and adored. They have made our heads snap or our stomachs sink, summoned us to attention or driven us to our knees. 

Here are our own numbers, days plucked from the twelve short months we share. They have brought us suffering and joy, celebration and sorrow. They have turned bitter or sweet, epic or forgettable, hard-fought or barely noticed. They have made us feel ancient or young, grateful or unlucky, already or not-yet. 

What if I asked you instead? What if I leaned across this cool counter and pushed aside the papers between us and asked for your hand? For your deepest fear? Your truest love? Your wildest dream? Your hidden regret? What if you took a deep breath and told me a story, too: the one who broke your heart, the town you left behind, the friend you miss like mad, the day you can’t forget, the sacrifice that brought you here. 

Because here is our humanity, waiting together. Here is the wide room of the whole of us, shining through each of us. Look at us, beyond face, beyond fear, beyond age, beyond now.

Name-and-birthdate, you ask, but we need so much more. Hear this name, here this truth, on this day, in this time. Could we see through the ordinary for a split second? Peer into the unknowable mysteries that we are, the fragile fierce truths that we hold. Beyond names, beyond dates, to the selves we once were, the hopes we might become.