Sitting amidst a scatter of old boxes and letters, the air thick with dust and the faint scent of aged paper, I gently lift a faded envelope, feeling the texture of time-worn into its creases. My name is etched into it, looking almost foreign, as if the word itself belongs to anyone but me. Full of the love, concern, and celebration it was written with, I glance through the pages, lit by the now dim light of the setting sun, and am reminded quietly of the ever-present passing of time.

It’s an intimate thing to hold in your hand a relic crafted by those who were once everything to you, each acknowledging your very existence for what it was at that poignant moment in time, without the harsh expectations of what was to come. Addressed to you and signed in their own names, intertwining a written connection that underscored the foundation of your relationship.

I see the fading texture of a pink crayon wishing me a happy birthday. I had just turned five, and the colour was the perfect embodiment of my best friend, who wrote in large and inconsistent lettering. Another, a few years later, is from ‘Santa,’ wishing me the most joyous of holidays, complete with chocolate stains from the cookies my eight-year-old self loved. My name in that one appears in a deep green that belonged to the sparkly gel pen I can now tell took shelter in my mother’s careful hand, as the card just under it looks strikingly similar.

Dated forward half a decade, the ‘y’ of my name loops in the same way, forming a hug around the following letters. Although she opted for a black pen this time, the sentiment was all the same. Tracing my fingers over those four letters, I am thirteen again, reading this card for the first time. She wrote of what it means to be a teenager, her hopes that my father and she share for my life, and how proud she is of the person I am becoming. Tucked neatly on the other half of the card is a similar message from my dad. He always made the ‘K’ of my name pointy and it stood tall above the rest of the letters, harsh in the way he pressed the ink into the page but strong in the way it sheltered my name—the polar opposite to the soft and timid hands of my sister saying goodbye. She wrote my name as if the very letters themselves were a lullaby that she could sing to imagine I had not yet left her. It provided sixteen-year-old me little comfort compared to the words that followed. Smudged blue with the mixture of our tears, it is hard now to reconcile myself with the person she was so thoughtfully writing to.

It is in the differences in how my name presents itself over the years that I find truly fascinating. The way I change my signature to match the different chapters of my life, how even typed, I can feel the coolness infused in the letters of my various report cards, and how something so simple as the development of my best friend’s handwriting can be so comforting. Although she strayed from crayons and now writes with strong assurance, I can still sense the consistency with which she writes my name, as if it’s in regards only to the Kyra she knew when we were five.

Through the cascading pile before me, I am confronted with an undeniable and lifelong identifier that takes many shapes. Each time my name is written, it adds a new square to the ever-expanding quilt of my existence. This quilt, woven from the threads of my relationships and experiences, becomes a tapestry of my identity. It is warm with the nostalgia of recognising myself in the faint changes in the way it’s written, a testament to the constancy of change. As I trace my fingers over each letter, every loop and curve, every sharp edge and soft line tells the story of who I was at that time. Though I am no longer the person they were writing to, each version of my name is still me, a continuity that threads through my existence. It is a quiet acknowledgment that, despite the transformations, I remain connected to every iteration of myself.