June 5

Yew Tree

Yves is a French boy's name that means Yew tree. The fact that I was given a boy's name was a source of childhood mortification, compounded upon the mortification of my first name of Constance (which no Jewish child in Brooklyn was ever named).  

In the late 60s, I was a girl with a boy's middle name. I was a girl, who for a couple of pre-pubescent years, wore clothes from the boy's "husky" section of the department store because there were no regular sized girls clothes, and none that I liked from the girl's "chubbette's" section. How much mortification could a kid take? 

When I married, I began using Riba instead of Yves. For many years I repressed my middle name, just I repressed my sexuality and gender identity. 

Now, I've reclaimed Yves. It's the perfect nonbinary name and it's been been part of me since freaking birth. 

Yew trees can live thousands of years. They have been a part of Celtic spirituality well before Christianity came to Europe. Yew trees can also be intersex, displaying both pollen (male) and berries (female) on the same plant. They can propagate by reaching their long branches to the ground and starting a new tree. 

I'm proud to have a nonbinary name that means a genderfluid being that reaches out.