HER NAME IS ELIZABETH MADELINE ELLIS

What was her mother thinking when she named her Elizabeth Madeline Ellis? Of course she became Mad Lizzie as soon as the toddlers in the playground could talk. And then, eventually, she became just mad. Insane. Obsessed. Suicidal.

Could she have followed a more somber path had she been named Judy or Carol? There were no Judiths in the family. Nor Carols. But there was an Elizabeth. An ambitious lady who followed the crowd to Chicago to celebrate the 400 year anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival to the new land. He returned to his native land. She stayed.  The Madeline tag came from another blood line. A woman of fine French breeding arrived outside of Chicago to bring some continental gentility to the rural lifestyle of a widowed music professor’s brood of six. Naturally, she married him.  A rather vigorous mixture to pour into the delicate Midwestern newborn who might have had more tranquility in her life had the blood been lower octane.

But Elizabeth Madeline Ellis she was and, although she couldn’t pronounce it until she lost her lisp, Elizabeth Madeline she remained through her spiraling life.  

Mad Lizzie is a crackpot; 

Mad Lizzie in a goon; 

Mad Lizzie sees a yellow light 

And thinks that it’s a moon.

Didn’t they have fun in the fifth grade making up the rhymes.

Mad Lizzie is a crackpot;

Mad Lizzie picks her nose;

Mad Lizzie wipes her fingers on

Her green and purple hose.

The verses rippled in her mind throughout her life – whenever she heard the iambic rhythms of poetry or song they were translated into the words pounded into her childhood 

Mad Lizzie is a crackpot; 

Mad Lizzie is a twit; 

Mad Lizzie puts a sweater on 

And thinks that she is it.

She finally made up a verse of her own. One more reflective of her life. One that captured the challenge that controlled her life movements. Mad Lizzie is a crackpot; Mad Lizzie is a jerk; Mad Lizzie takes a broken life and thinks she’ll make it work.

How she did try.