Green from the heart.

[original note from post to social media platforms, January 11, 2024: To those lovely friends who noticed a name change here and have inquired, yes Jarren and I are still deeply in love and our marriage is as strong as ever. Our surnames intermingle in all sorts of beautiful variations in the myriad systems we've been entered into. Since I'm putting more intention toward my social platforms, I've made a more deliberate choice regarding how I want to show up here. ]

For my birthday last year, I gave myself a legal name change. The name I've chosen, Green, is a name I've always earmarked for a child of my own, right at the top of my list. In recent years, Jarren and I have become clear that making children of our own isn't something we feel enticed by, so the name sat on a hook in my closet, waiting to be given to something else.

The name Green originally dawned on me when I first heard Joni Mitchell's haunting ballad to her daughter, "Little Green". It was one sweltering evening back in 2007 when Lau and I, newly-hatched chosen queer siblings, nursed IKEA glasses of drugstore red wine and listened to it, the third track on Joni's canonical 'Blue' album. Pearls clutched in wistful silliness. The song soothingly explained that it's "Green, like the night when the Northern Lights perform," and something stirred in me that felt like a yearning to grow.

I've actually never seen the aurora in the sky, but every part of my soul feels drawn to them. Lau shaved my head later that night, a queer rite of passage, under the persistently deactivating motion-detected porchlight outside her basement apartment. We didn't know how to say it yet, but Lau and I were becoming more ourselves by shedding the locks that had grown before.

From a different angle, Green has also been an identity for me. As a second son, my messy little universe of soothers and toothbrushes and later duotangs and pencil cases was– always and forever– green. Partly because my brother's had been blue from day one, but that thought hadn't occurred to me until recently. Mostly, I just feel more like myself when I see the colour green. I see it and think, "Yeah, that's me!". 

However, in the schoolyard hierarchy of favourite colours that I grew up within, blue was indeed the king of favourite colours for the category of children that I was assigned, with green and perhaps orange as its slightly less boyish sidekicks. A second-clarinet to somebody else was a role I grew comfortable playing in my earlier years, but I notice how much taller I stand when I give myself permission to opt out of secondness and put myself gently, assuredly, first. To that end, Green is an anthem I sing for my Self, my aesthetic taste, my preferences, my nurturing spirit and my deep, deep heart.

And now, as most ideas do once I fall in love with them, Green's foothold in my imagination has only deepened. I've grown into my midthirties and feel empowered to shape my life into something I can truly be enamoured by. So, when I openly raised the question "what would I change my middle name to if I could?" it only took my a moment before I glanced at myself in the mirror and said, "I can." 

So here I am, legally and truly Parker Green McLean. Standing proud in who I am and always have been.