Who I Am In 500 Words or Less

My name is Donna (not to be confused with My Name is Asher Lev or My Name is Khan or My name is Inigo Montoya) though I always wanted the name Ruby. This was my father’s mother’s name and I’ve, happily, been compared to her.

When Grandpa was fading out of this life, years after Grandma had moved on, we’d sit together telling stories -- he’d forget it was me and call me Ruby. My Aunt Mary Ann, Ruby’s daughter, would grin wildly when I would get on a rant about this or that (religion and politics usually, though fashion choices of passersby could spark me up too) and say “oh, you sound just like Mother.” And that was a very good thing. My father has had his Ruby Moments with me too.

Grandma didn’t like her name -- it wasn’t fashionable or spiffy way back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I guess that might be like having the name Edna or Agnes now.

My favorite story about Grandma -- she was head nurse at Toledo General Hospital and owned her own car. This was in the late 1920s. She got it in her head that she wanted to see Alaska before it was overrun by tourists (sort of like going to Prague in the early ‘90s?) so she jumped in her car and drove there -- alone. This was before the ALCAN Highway, before World War II and well before it was common for a woman to make this kind of solo trip.

“Ruby,” for me, means strong, adventurous, unafraid and bold -- all the things I want to be.

I never knew my other grandmother, Angelina, and know very little about her beyond this --  she was a seamstress, a recent immigrant from a small town near Bari in Italy and died when my mother was 16. She had Neurofibromatosis Type 2 which she passed on to my mother and, in turn, to me. But that’s a whole other story.

So, if I was to choose my own name, it would be Ruby Angelina Maderer. Or Circe Oceanus Nyx. Why? Hey, it sounds awesomely cool and you can dance to it.

After college, a friend of mine, Kevin Alexander Scott (R.I.P.) became a translator (Arabic and Hebrew) for the Navy. They wanted him to start doing undercover type stuff so they gave him an alias. He bombed out of this quickly and spectacularly when it became clear he’d never be able to remember to answer to his fake name and identity. I suspect I’d be the same way.

Besides, though the name Maderer is decidedly unmelodic and lacks even the faintest whiff of poetry, it is my father’s name and I am, without question, a chip or 3 off the old block.