My mother named me. When she was pregnant with me, she read an article about twin princesses born in Malaysia who were named Soraya and Surina, named after stars in the sky. She liked the name Surina, and chose it for me.

 

I had other names too. When we moved to Connecticut, my mother, a fan of the nickname, asked me, “Do you want to be called  Betsy or Cindy?” I’m not sure why she only offered me those two choices, or why I didn’t ask for additional choices. Maybe because I liked the names Betsy and Cindy. At first I had a difficult time choosing between the two until I remembered how much I liked watching The Brady Bunch, one of my favorite shows, so I chose Cindy, who was the youngest of six siblings in the Brady family. For years my mother would affectionately call me Cindy or Cindy Lou.

When I was growing up, I never knew anyone named Surina, only Serena the mischievous cousin of  Samantha on the television show Bewitched. These days, the name Surina is increasing in popularity. Made even more popular by the character Serena on Gossip Girl. And how could I forget Serena Williams the tennis star? Surina even shows up on the website Babynamer.com. According to which, my name is used in Hindi and the source of it is Sura, a Sanskrit name meaning “Goddess.” Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes shortened my name to Suri for their daughter. It’s possible that my name may become a favorite of the Scientologists next.

Serena the witch was so popular when I was younger that people were forever misspelling my name, Serena, or sometimes Sarina. I still have to spell it. “It’s Surina, spelled S-u-r-i-n-a,” I say when people ask me my name. And then I spell my last name, “Khan, spelled K-h-a-n,” which, even when I spell it, gets spelled incorrectly as Kahn. So now I say, “It’s Khan, spelled K-h- pause for emphasis a-n. I have seen my name spelled in a variety of ways: Sarina Kahn, Serena Cahn, Sorina Caan. Maybe one day my name will be so popular that the spelling will be too.

Sometimes for fun, Jenny and I think about what our names and occupations would be if we had to go into the Witness Protection Program. Jenny chose Beck (from Rebecca) Laarsen, consistent with her Swedish heritage. Beck would be a valet at a boutique hotel in Montreal. I would be the concierge at the same hotel and my name would be Betsy Singh, consistent with my South Asian heritage, but mixing up the Indian/Pakistani and the Muslim/Sikh just to make a fun political statement. I like that my initials would be BS. And then Beck would make an honorable woman out of me, and I would change my name to Betsy Singh Laarsen.

 

Shortly after we moved to Connecticut, I discovered ice cream. My father loved it as much as I did. At least once a week, and often more, we would get in the car and drive to the nearby Friendly’s, an east coast restaurant chain. He would order two scoops of coffee ice cream, and I would get chocolate ice cream on a sugar cone with chocolate sprinkles. We’d often take the ice cream back to the car and eat it together in a comfortable silence.

When I got my first record player, a plastic, white and black General Electric glorified toy, my father, who was starting to gain a few pounds with the regular ice cream excursions, made me an attractive offer. “You can get one record album a week if we give up Friendly’s.”

One record album a week. Tempting. But giving up ice cream so shortly after I had discovered it was unthinkable. After a minute of careful consideration, I said, “I’ll keep the ice cream trips to Friendly’s.” I was gambling on the fact that I might get an occasional record album too. My first record was Elton John’s “Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player.”

And then my musical taste began to go down hill. I became infatuated with Shaun Cassidy. When we moved to the Stoner Drive house, I had my own bedroom, where I placed a life size poster of Shaun Cassidy on my wall. I would climb up on a chair every night and give him a good night kiss on the cheek. And if I was feeling randy, I would give him a peck on the lips, when no one was looking.

Now that I look back on this, I’m thinking these might have been the first indications of my future as a lesbian. Shaun Cassidy did look an awful lot like a lesbian in his youth. You can hardly tell him and Kristy McNichol apart in this photo.