Nurse Vivian and other fitting names
When writing this column, I make mistakes. Most of the time the readers don’t know because the unsung heroes of The Chronicle, the editors, defend truth against my exaggeration.
“No, not the outer, outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior,” they write. “It’s the outer, outer, outer, outer (four) Excelsior. The first outer is La Grande Water Tower, but by the time you get to the fifth you’re in San Jose.”
You readers are also usually right in your corrections as well, but last week someone wrote, “You should try calling Nurse Vivian ‘Mother.’ ”
Nurse Vivian was Nurse Vivian. To everyone. If you were feeling formal, you could call her Mrs. Paulson, but if any of her children tried “Mother,” she’d say, “We save that for the convent.”
Nurse Vivian was her identity. Vivian was not her legal name, but Grandpa Wise never knew that. The story goes that in Johnstown at the time, baptismal certificates served as birth records. Grandpa Wise didn’t want a Catholic family, so Grandma took her child down to St. Joseph’s one night and had her christened on the sly. The parish priest insisted that there was no such saint as Vivian, so Grandma looked up at the stained glass windows, picked the only female Biblical character she could find and said, “Go with that.”
No one ever told Vivian that her legal/ liturgical name was Ruth, not until senior year of Johnstown High School, 1939. The first graduate in her family, she decided that that she didn’t want to work at Woolworth’s on Franklin Street until she married a coal miner. She applied to Kings County Nursing School in Brooklyn, and had no choice but to matriculate as Nurse Candidate Ruth.
That September, the head nurse gave her a day off. And another in October. But then came December and the head nurse scheduled her to work on Christmas. When she went to ask why, the head nurse said, “Ruth Wise. I have given you off Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. Now you work a shift so the Catholic girls can have a day off.”
“Well, then, from now on I’m Nurse Vivian. It’s neither Jewish nor Catholic.”
That’s how she introduced herself when she met Hap. That’s how she signed her Christmas cards.
Every boy in Ozone Park with a scraped knee knew that you had to go to Nurse Vivian. Every Saturday night, when a driver rolled down 131st Street on his way home from Aqueduct Race Track, missed the stop sign and clipped a car, the boys ran to knock on the aluminum door on Sutter Avenue, so that Nurse Vivian would run out with her sewing kit and a tray of ice.
Nurse Vivian only ever prescribed three things:
Warm buttered soda bread, the kind with caraway seeds and raisins. Blackberry brandy. A novena to St. Jude.
She worked swing watch at the obstetrics ward of Jamaica Hospital, and (much to my dismay) it’s likely she was on duty the morning that Donald Trump was born.
Brother X chose his name as well. Long before the column, there was “A Song for Lost Angels,” and by the third chapter I had mentioned how poorly he played the accordion, so he said, “From now on, whenever you write about me, call me Brother X.” It’s a thing now. Mrs. X. Son of X. Dog of X.
Which brings me to my son Aidan. Without Zane around, he has room to grow. And growing requires a little rebellion. Last week we walked to Cordova Market. They have only two kinds of bread, but 20 flavors of ice cream. I handed Aidan a bag with mint chocolate chip, chocolate and caramel swirl, and he balked. Aidan’s brain is asymmetric. Angry about ice cream is not about ice cream. He vented for three blocks until he got to, “I don’t even like the name Aidan Timothy. Why did I have to get adopted by someone who’d pick that?”
Arguing at these times does neither of us any good. So I offered, “Your birth mother called you one name, after a man you would never meet. We called you Aidan Timothy to honor Uncle Tim, who died the year you were born. But here’s how names work. You don’t have to live with either. You pick your own. Go ahead. Nurse Vivian. Brother X. Captain Kevin. Whatever you want. Just make sure you’re true to it.”
Aidan shrugged, because teenagers hate getting the wind taken out of their outrage.“Well, at least its not Thaddeus.”
Editors, please note: turns out that cleric was wrong. There indeed was a St. Vivian. Patron saint of hangovers and the mentally ill. All in all, right up the FisherPaulson tree.
Nurse Vivian was her identity. Vivian was not her legal name, but Grandpa Wise never knew that.