I’ve been addressing invitations. Since they’re shower invitations I don’t actually know most of the people on the list. I just have assorted lists of names and addresses contributed by friends and in-laws of the showeree. Never has the inadequacy of our system been more clear to me.

In the distant past, we looked at the hodgepodge of feminine courtesty titles and it wasn’t good. And it was sexist. Men were all simply “Mr.” unless they used a professional title such as “Dr.” Things are more complicated in countries with an aristocracy, but so far in the U.S. the only aristocracy is wealth. Women’s titles, however, were indicators of marital status. “Miss” indicated the lack of a husband and “Mrs.” indicated that the woman in question was the property of one. So “Ms.” was coined to address that issue. Unfortunately it carried heavy political baggage and wasn’t universally adopted. Also, we don’t adapt to change when there’s still time to do it in an orderly fashion. After all, we’re still not using the metric system in the U.S.A. We prefer to wait until things have gotten totally out of hand. “Ms.” has become the title of choice for women who identify themselves as feminists and divorced women.

So, looking at this list of all female names, I have no idea about the marital status of a lot of them. And even if I did, it wouldn’t really help. When you address someone as “Mrs.”, you’re supposed to follow that with her husband’s name, not hers. “Mrs. Zelda Fitzgerald” is wrong. You’d need to write, “Mrs. Scott Fitzgerald”. But I don’t know her husband’s name, nor do I know if she’s the only Mrs. Fitzgerald in her household. She might live with mother-in-law or daughter-in-law. That’s one of the things “Ms.” should be perfect for, but frankly, it pisses some people off. Some married women prefer to be called Mrs. And when I answer the phone at work a surprising number of women identify themselves as “Miss”. There are more types of marital status than there used to be, too. There are the old standbys of married and single. Divorced has been around in large numbers long enough to be a classic now. But there’s also “married but keeping own name” and “divorced and returned to own name” and you have to know which it is to get it right. So, my mail is just going to Zelda Fitzgerald. No Mrs., Miss or Ms.

Thinking all this over made me realize why I’ve started to dislike sending holiday cards. Addressing them has gotten too complicated, too. You used to be safe just knowing the marital status of the recipient and whether there were other people in the household. A card could go to “Mr and Mrs Scott Fitzgerald” and family, for instance. If you weren’t sure about how “Mr. and Mrs.” would be received, “The Fitzgerald Family” was a reasonable cop out. Now you have situations like my own daughter’s family. She was divorced, reverted to her own name, remarried and kept it and her daughter who is a product of the first marriage, has her father’s last name. That’s three for three. One last name for each person in the household. I’m not sure about the dogs. Not every family includes a married couple either. I haven’t figured a solution to this one, other than not sending cards on purpose instead of just as a result of procrastination.