I felt confident as I drove of The Hill and headed to the DMV. I arrived and as luck would have it, there was no line. In fact, there was not another soul there. So I confidently and proudly swaggered up to the window and laid down my documents. She picked them up, studied them, and said, "I need to see your marriage license." "Excuse me?" I asked pretty incredulously. "I said," she continued, "I need to see your marriage license and not just the one some clergy signed, the real one from the state." I must have looked completely befuddled, and possibly on the verge of having a hormonal teen meltdow. I mean, I haven't had to show anyone my marriage license in over 28 years. She continued, "Your birth certificate says Ann Katherine Kanto and your Kentucky drivers license says Ann Katherine Kanto Doyle. I need to verify you're the same person."
Now fortunately, I knew exactly where the marriage license was as it was with all the other documents I had been looking at for the last 48 hours. She handed me the application and said I should also fill it out before I came back, you know to save time.
When I returned I handed back all the documents plus the marriage license and the application. She looked down, looked up and under hair color scratched off blonde and wrote gray. (Which for the record doesn't even show up on the completed license.....) Then she verified everything and passed me on to the next person. I guess that confusing adding one name was instantly cleared up--and yes, I know I'm being snarky and she was just doing her job--I've got to have some fun with this.
I again had to fill out forms (pretty much the same ones I already had, but I wasn't going to make a big deal about it. Teenage hormonal Ann Katherine Kanto would have). The second lady looked at me and said, "You pass." I'm not even sure what that means, but she reached down took my Kentucky license and with a hole punch punched the word VOID into it. I felt a punch in my gut and thought, "Void? Like I never existed there?"
I decided not to overthink it as I'm proned to do, and instead turn the whole episode into somethng funny. I texted the story to several friends and we LOL'd about it.
But, for the last few weeks, every once in awhile I think about it, and I don't laugh.
This morning as I was walking on the beach and feeling all kinds of feels, I kept seeing my Kentucky license with the word VOID and my Virginia license (which came in the mail right after I left and Chris brought me and does NOT say one word about my hair color).
Fourteen and a half years---that's how long we lived in Kentucky. I am aware I'm not from there (which has also occasionally been painfully pointed out to me). I mean when asked, I say I'm from Georgia as that's where I went to school until college (my formative years), but technically I was born in Virginia, so well, whatever. But for 14 1/2 years I have lived in Kentucky--it is the place where some of the most difficult things I have ever lived through happened. And it's also the place where I believe I have evolved into some of the best version of myself. Kentucky is where we mostly reared our children and definitely where they say they're from. It's where I finished my discernment and was ordained to the Diaconate and the Priesthood. It's where I learned I love working with youth and I could indeed be a leader. It's where I made and lost friends and found my voice--some of that was definitely all intertwined.
"VOID" it's just a word. And there is a reality to moving. Life moves on in the place you left. Others fill roles that used to be yours. New people move in who never knew you. Some people forget you. But my life in Kentucky? It happened.
It's just a word, but it also can, during transition, feel like a razor blade that slices off the scab that had started to form from the pain of leaving. It also can force you to look deep into yourself and stare at who you are at the core and wonder/dream/imagine what you will evolve into being in this new place, this new time, and this new space.
It's just a word, and it's so much more.
Oh, and for the record, I am both Ann Katherine Kanto and Ann Katherine Kanto Doyle--they both still exist....
(The new license also says Endorsements--NONE which I am trying, somewhat successfully, to ignore...)
