Possessive S

Although I've owned my Compaq laptop for five years, it didn't occur to me until last week to add possessive s to the dictionary so that spell check no longer identifies "Kemba's" as a grammatical infraction.

I remember the morning my laptop was presented to me--yet another act of contrition by my HATT (husband at the time) in an attempt to make amends for some act of warfare on the killing fields of my body that had, by then, become commonplace. He watched me warily as I opened it, daring me to object.

"This is too much money," I remember telling him. We were pressed to pay the mortgage on our historic-designated home, our SUV, and all the other trappings that bound us to a lifestyle as perilous as a house of cards. I had just announced that I wanted to take my writing more seriously; maybe even transitioning out of corporate architecture into editing or freelance writing.

"How much did it cost?" I asked.
"Don't worry about it," he said. "If you don't accept it, we'll both know you weren't serious about wanting to be a writer."

I knew enough to understand the subtly of threats that rest within polite platitudes. I felt resigned to accept it--this latest consolation prize in a war I was losing inch by inch. And when the bill came for our Best Buy account, I felt powerless to protest the $1800 laptop that was now mine to finance. The laptop that was, at least, portable enough to keep with me when my fortune finally changed and all that I owned was stripped away.

Fast forward to the now, sitting in the Plum Market coffee shop, writing a biography blurb for an upcoming play. And the line: "Kemba's formal training as an architect infuses her literary work with imagery that is both visually striking and spatially conscious," greets me with that indicator of a misspelled word--the squiggly red line. For the last five years, I've never even noticed how my laptop refused to accept the possessive s as a letter to be associated with my name. For the last five years, the notion of me possessing anything has been identified as a misnomer, and I never thought to correct it. Until now. I added, "Kemba's" to the dictionary and what rich symbolism existed within that simple measure; what rich symbolism in claiming what I am now free to possess--my life, my story, my name.