Who is Marie Anne?

I was named for my paternal grandmother, who died shortly before I was born. I like my name. I think Marie Anne St. Jean has a nice ring to it when pronounced with the inflection common to our friends to the north, from whence my father's family came. I wasn't graced with a middle name; my Christian name is truly Marie Anne, not Marie. It's on my birth certificate that way. Honest. I pronounce it like Mary Anne, though, which confuses people even more.

Growing up in a typical French-Irish New England city, I attended a Catholic grade school for eight years. The nuns insisted that I be called Marie and I tried to correct them only once. After being put in my place at such a tender age, I didn't venture into that territory again. As if I didn't have enough issues in my young life, I now had an identity crisis - Marie Anne (Mary Anne) at home, and Marie at school. Neighborhood friends were just as confused as they'd use my given name when we played together, but went back to Marie when at school to appease the nuns. When moving on to a large public high school, Marie came with me.

Try as I might, no one wanted me to be Marie Anne. I enlisted in the Marine Corps straight from high school and when given my ID card at graduation, mine said Pvt Marie A. St. Jean. I handed it back and insisted that they correct it (gutsy move for a Marine recruit, I tell ya). My given name didn't become much of an issue during my 21 year Marine Corps career, largely because they gave me a new one every so often anyway. I got the names that hundreds of thousands of Marines before me and since have been called - Private, Lance Corporal, Sergeant - you get the idea. Of course the best name of all was simply 'Marine'.

Being one of a small number of women Marines in that era, I often struggled with who Marie Anne really was. The regimentation of military life in many cases left little opportunity for individuality; you become one small sapling in a dense forest. I've been daughter, sister, wife, mother to two, 'the Gunny' or 'Top' to many. What happened to Marie Anne?

I've since shed some of those monikers, and although the title 'Marine' is mine until death and I'll always be Mom, neither of those tags are a part of my day to day life. I hung up my uniform thirteen years ago, and my sons are miles away with lives of their own. I've tacked on other last names over the years, but have decided to go out of this world with the same name I came in with, so Marie Anne St. Jean it is. Things have truly come full circle.

But it still begs the question ...

Who is Marie Anne?