Years ago, I wrote about favorite names I’d come across in my lifetime, some I thought gratingly awful, some riotously funny. One was a kid I knew named Three Searles, named Three because he was his parents’ third child and they couldn’t think of another name at the time, so they named him a number. Can you imagine what his life was like being named after a sum? One can only imagine.
Another was a girl I knew with the last name of Turvy and you can guess what first name her folks gave her. Yes, Topsy. Poor Topsy. Another was a name I always thought sounded weird although the girl herself really wasn’t; Melanie Fleegle.
But my favorite name of all time was owned by a short, funny and lively school chum a year or two younger than I, whose name was Poppy Litinsky. She doesn’t use that name any longer because she married a man named Bob Madden and took his last name, but I’ve been so in love with the humorous sound of “Poppy Litinsky,” I have never been able to let it go. Poppy Litinsky will always be Poppy Litinsky to me.
Poppy was very smart, very friendly and never seemed to think she had to apologize for her name. Her mother, a woman who gardened, thought her beautiful new baby girl resembled a red poppy, called her that and the name stuck. It was a wee bit odd because her real given name was Ruby, which as everyone knows is a red gem. I guess her folks thought the flower was redder than a ruby, so Poppy she became and Poppy she has remained.
When I wrote the column about these odd names, for some reason I thought “Oh, if Poppy ever finds this piece about her, she’ll sue me,” so in the column, I renamed her Daffodil Litinsky, but never changed any of the other names. Maybe those folks will come after me someday, but Poppy I changed. Can’t explain why.
After high school we lost touch with each other for a few decades but I never forgot her. Did I wonder about her? Not really. She was a pretty self-sufficient kid, able to hold her own, brainy and resourceful. I only thought about her when her amusing name came bubbling into memory.
One summer Sunday several years ago the house was very quiet, the weather beautiful, breezy, cool and sunny, a perfect Maine day. Our granddaughter was working on a painting on my basement easel, dear husband “Mongo” was out on his bike and my heart was filled with serenity. I began to work on an ongoing story on my laptop. There was lots of peace in my world that day.
The doorbell rang. Oh no. I cussed, got up, walked to the door, opened it and stared down at a short woman, maybe a little younger than I. A big handsome white haired man stood next to her. She looked up at me, did not smile and said rather angrily, “My name is not Daffodil.”
Without missing a beat I yelled “POPPY???” and I laughed out loud. Indeed it was she, looking slightly ticked at me, but not dangerous. Poppy Litinsky Madden and her husband Bob had come to call.
We spent a few hours together. Mongo returned from his exercise and the four of us chatted, the husbands gradually sinking into the glassy-eyed, rigor mortis boredom husbands are so good at when stuck with reminiscing wives who had known each other long ago.
Bob Madden was a retired police officer who worked more than 21 years in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. and who, since that summer day, unfortunately left us for that big PD in the sky. We suspect he’s loving it there and is running things quite well.
Poppy is a retired crime reporter whose career covered newspapers in Massachusetts, New York and Florida. Several years ago she achieved nationwide fame by winning her case to be allowed to hang her clothes to dry on a line outside her beautiful home in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where she now lives. I Googled her and indeed it’s true. Her angered neighbors had been protesting the sight of Poppy’s “purple panties” on the line, “destroying” their view of a beautiful canal. Because she’s brainy and experienced, Poppy won her case, and apparently her neighbors are still treated to the sight of Poppy Litinsky Madden’s purple drawers soaking up the Florida sun.
I wish I could attach an old photo of my dear friend Poppy but alas, it has to be committed to memory as I’ve lost it. In that photo, her head is protected with her old Civil Defense helmet issued by the Fire Department of the City of New York back when we all were waiting to have the atom bomb dropped on the U.S.A. She tells me she was wearing it recently as she endeavored to chase Mockingbirds away from her now famous clothes line. These nasty birds apparently attack Floridians’ heads when they’re displeased and it seems they’re often displeased. Poppy is also displeased at the geckos who drop dead out of the trees when the temps in FL dip to a numbing forty degrees and plunk loudly on her canal boardwalk.
When Poppy and Bob visited us that day in Maine, Bob told us how he’d won a medal for his heroism in WW II, saving crew members from an exploded, burning plane, the medal given to him decades after the fact. A good man. A hero. He mattered.
Old friends with flowers for names. It was a great Sunday.