Throughout my lifetime, I have heard endless stories of back when my Mom was in college studying Psychology. You may expect that these stories were on topics such as college-life or the important lessons that you learn at this age, yet, the stories that I am referring to aren't even close to those kind of topics.
Even as a little girl, I remember constantly hearing about a woman named Catherine that my Mom went to college and participated in endless activities with. The stories that I heard revolved around her pure and natural beauty, as well as her extreme determination and initiative intelligence. Her well-roundedness made her the type of person that every girl wanted to be like and it was her corky, yet charming personality that made her so likable to everyone she knew.
By no means am I trying to say that my Mom named after this woman, however, I do believe that we encounter some incredible people throughout our lives, and may fall in-love with their name simply because of the person that they are and the morals that they display. Just like certain people tend to "ruin" a particular name for us, others may leave us really loving it due to the smart, kind, and genuine person that they are.
I have always envisioned this mysterious woman throughout my entire twenty-one years of life without a second thought. I imagined her to be the brilliant, strong woman in which she was always mentioned to be, and I truly believed that my name carried all of her beautiful qualities within it. I was, and am, so proud to be called something that represents a person with such intelligence and natural beauty.
Last weekend, while visiting home, another one of my Mom's "Catherine" stories just so happened to come up. Yet, this time, I wanted to know more.
"Do you have her on Facebook or something?", I asked my Mom. "I really just want to see what she looks like".
"I don't think she has Facebook", she replied back to me. And off we went, searching her name throughout Facebook.
All we seemed to come across were a bunch of women who weren't the person that we were looking for. On one final last-ditch-effort, my Mom typed her name into google hoping something would come up.
The first thing I saw was the profile of a verified film producer. I quickly looked past that initial heading, and my eyes immediately went to the next article, hoping to find something that would link us to her.
"That kind of looks like her", my Mom said, pointing to the image of the verified film producer at the top of the page.
"You think I look like her?", I said squinting at the little image on the screen and remembering the handful of times that my Mom had told me that even some of my features resemble hers.
As we clicked on more images, the two of us rapidly started going though this woman's photos until we came across a very simple, black and white, headshot.
"THAT"S HER!" she squealed.
"What?!" I replied back, more than confused.
As we went through more and more photos, it turned out that this film producer from Manhattan just so happened to be the "Catherine from college" that I have heard about all these years.
Throughout the next few hours, my Mom eventually found the photos of them back in their college days and I was stunned by just how similarly I envisioned her.
Honestly, deep-down, I never wanted to see a photo of her. I feared that she would be nothing like the "perfect" person in which I constantly imagined her to be since I first heard about her. But that fear quickly went away the second I saw her photo. She was stunningly beautiful and just by looking at her, I could envision her portraying all of the amazing qualities in which she had during her college years.
I am now more proud than I have even been to have a name that not only symbolizes kindness and elegance, but such devotion and achievement. A name that represents an individual who is strong, passionate, creative, and someone who never fears the fact that their dreams may seem out-of-reach.
