On my right hand, between the first and second knuckles, tucked away inside my fingers, sits a tiny bump.

For the first four decades of my life, I had no idea it existed.

Even now, I don't know what it is: beauty mark, mole or some other kind of miniature flaw. It doesn't much matter anyway, as small and insignificant as it is.

But in the last three years, since the birth of our youngest son, the bump has become not just visible but important.

"Can I touch the bump?" he asked, at first, though now I put my hand in his at nighttime without him asking. He pets my hand, lightly, almost meditatively, as he drinks his milk or when he wakes up from a nightmare and needs comforting.

When we hold hands crossing the street, he quickly grabs my right hand before our other son can get there.

"It's my favorite hand," he says, "because of the bump."

I've often marveled how that tiny imperfection is his favorite part of me.

Many times, I've looked at that bump and thought of how, when I was a child, I disliked my name.

My first name, Georgia, was odd, in the worst way.

The world around me was full of Heathers and Jennifers and Melissas, and whenever I met someone, they'd make the same lame joke about my siblings being named "North Dakota" or "Wyoming." "Georgia" also means "farmer," and I could think of nothing less glamorous than working in dirt.

My last name was Evdoxiadis, a tongue-twister of uncertain but profound ethnicity to anyone who wasn't, themselves, Greek.

As far as pronunciation went, forget it.

Reading my name on the class list, a teacher's eyes would widen. They'd sometimes stammer out an attempt.

"Ev — ox — ee — aye — dis," was a common mangling.

Of course, there also were jokes about my name sounding like diseases and how I learned to spell it in kindergarten, unfunny jokes too numerous to recount here.

I've had more than one person simply refuse to try, which, in some ways, was a bit of a relief.

My name, first and last, branded me as a foreigner, an outsider, someone who'd never be the blond cheerleader, the '80s movie love interest. Instead, I was a greasy Greek who ate weird food and had an even weirder name.

I tried to erase that weirdness in my fantasies, created a world where I corrected that flaw of a name.

In junior high, I wrote what would now be considered fanfic about working as a Rolling Stone reporter. In it, my first name was glamorous and strong, like Veronica or Vivian, my last name bland and white, like Clark.

When I married, though, I changed my name and my feelings started to shift.

I often missed my Greek last name, the sticker that advertised me as a stranger, an outsider and an immigrant.

I'd long grown to love my first name. It's uncommon, and I now value that. It's also a name that I share, in a masculine form, with my great-grandfather, my father and now my youngest son. It's a bond to my history, and to my future.

I didn't see it at the time, but my name was always interesting, weird and a little cool.

And, like the bump on my hand, whether I liked it or not, it was part of me.

I wish I'd known back then that my flaws, the places where I fell short, would be, as I aged, what I and others would most love about me.

Because our most interesting features are always the bumps. They're the places, not where we're the same, but where we diverge. And in the end, they're the only parts that matter.

They're memorable. They're worthy of pride.

Our differences are not just beautiful. They're something even more important: They're us.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

Photo credit: TechPhotoGal at Pixabay