I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the slowdown.

When I was married, I would sometimes get male addressed to Mrs, followed by my then-husband's name.

It's an old-fashioned way of addressing a married woman, Mrs. John Smith, Mrs. Adam Jones.

And if I'm honest, yes, most of that male came from his older relatives, people who were kind and who meant well.

But wow, did it make me feel like an accessory to someone else's life.

Like I was in a little sidecar, riding along,

but not driving. The funny part of this is that I didn't even change my last name when I got married. I was Maggie Smith, not Mrs. Anything. When someone called me Mrs. Smith,

I probably winced a little. Mrs. Smith was and is my mother. I was and am Ms. Smith.

I ask my children's friends to call me Maggie. It's just easier.

Some of them take to that naturally, and others have been raised not to use first names with adults.

I get it. I was raised that way, too. So I don't mind when they awkwardly call me Rett's mom, for example. I'm pretty comfortable riding in my children's

sidecars. Maybe all of this concern about naming sounds nitpicky, but names matter. What we call one

another matters. There is power and respect in naming, and in who gets named at all.

In many of the stories I grew up with, the men are named, but their wives

and daughters are not. That makes it pretty clear who the main characters are, doesn't it? For example,

in the story of Noah's Ark, in the book of Genesis and the Christian Bible, there are four wives on the ark, the wives of Noah and his three sons.

Guess which characters aren't named? That's right, the wives. Noah's wife is identified as just that, Noah's wife.

I can just imagine her getting a card from someone that's addressed that way, Noah's wife,

and sighing deeply, or rolling her eyes eyes or muttering under her breath.

Today's poem is one in which the wife of Noah gets to speak.

Noah's nameless wife takes inventory by C.T. Salazar

Horse, heart, hyena, heart, swan, spine, silver, fish shining in black water yes timber wolf tooth yes pity the ark with its belly full of glowing tongues touch the lion's paw only while it sleeps. The red-tailed hawk with jewels

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