Me in Riddles

The First Thing Anyone Knows

My name will stick with me like sap to a tree. Do I like my name?

My dad is Bao. My mom is Yen. I am Bao Yen. Bao Yen. bao een. Ask the first syllable, shriek the second. Bảo Yến. I am a fusion of my parents, like my name is the fusion of my parents' names. A name stands for everything about a person, acting as a summary of their life and of their self. I am my father's brain, and I am his ambition. I am my mother's hair and her hands.

Bảo means precious. It means protected. It means loved. Yến is a bird. It is a bird whose nest saves the wizened and the weakened. It is a miraculous, mystical cure that plants a seed of happiness wherever it goes. A seed that grows into a tree of continued life, continued love, continued happiness, I am loved like a spring of happiness by my parents, their first child.

But I'm more, even, than the seeds of my being. Before the bird made the nest, it was a fledgling, still learning to fly so that it could one day soar above the clouds. I am like that fledgling, learning to balance on my wobbly wings that are fighting to fly in their own styles, one stronger than the other. I am like the bird, listening to my parents advice, but perfecting my own techniques of flight. I am like the bird, getting ready to soar and save as many souls as I can. One day, I will plant the same seeds of happiness as the bird, giving everyone tree of life to care about and to care for and to protect and to love.

So, yes. I do like my name. It does not define me because a name never can. Yet, in a twist of fate, God has let it not only represent me like all names do, but He has allowed it to explain a core part of me. He has allowed my name to be a seed for a girl full of curiosity and ambition. Bảo Yến will always be everything about me, some from the past, some ever growing, some yet to come. And it has been a symbol for my identity for so long now, there is simply no sense in changing it now. No, not now. Not ever.