“Seriously, Ma, couldn’t you find someone to name me after?”

The first time I had to do a name report for school, I panicked. Mimi was named for her great-somebody-or-other, Esther had stories galore about her namesake, and me? I was in trouble.

I was born the day after Shavuos, and in keeping with the season, was named Shoshana Rus.

Aha.

So, everyone was named for someone, and they could write these beautiful essays about the “very special person” they were named for. Not me.

Even a feeling would have been better: “My parents were so grateful when I was born, and that’s why my name is Yehudis Tehilla Bracha Tova Shira.” But no, I had to be named for… flowers? Really?

This angst resurfaced all through elementary school. Sometimes I thought about making it up: I could write a beautiful essay about my great-grandmother Shoshana (was anyone in Warsaw or Pultusk named Shoshana in 1902?) who was a big tzadeikes and headed the women’s chevra kaddisha and married off poor brides.

Or maybe Bubby Shoshana was from the American side, and she slaved away in sweatshops, sewing buttons all day, putting away her pennies to pay yeshivah tuition, and look! She was zocheh to generations of bnei Torah. The End.

But alas, it always came back to the flowers. “I was born in the springtime, the day after Shavuos. My parents chose the name Shoshana, a rose, like the beautiful flowers that adorned Har Sinai….”

Ho-hum.

I wanted a “very special person” to write about, like my sisters did.