Yes, that Rudy.

I watched Rudy last night.  It was in HD so I couldn't resist, and I tuned in just before Dan Ruettiger finally gets his acceptance letter from Notre Dame.  You know, when he sits on the bench overlooking the water and then begins to lose his breath, and then he races away, and in the next scene, he appears at the steel mill where his family works to prove to his father that he's become something.  (Sigh.)  Oh, Rudy.  I've probably see this movie at least thirty times.  It's probably been on television at least thirty times this year.  When I played field hockey at Smith, I insisted that our warmup music begin with "Take Us Out," a 1:51 minute anthem from the soundtrack you've heard before if you've ever watched any coverage of any sporting event.  In my other life as a high school English teacher, I showed Rudy to just about every class.  Especially my classes of Sweathogs, who were for the most part, already too far gone to appreciate what I was trying to teach them with Rudy's life story: hard work matters; dreams matter; dedication matters.  All these things deserve respect.  You know, pretty much everything I'd like to think I believe.

I completed Boston's twenty-mile Walk for Hunger several years in a row before I became a mom.  One year I did it with my good friend Kate Shea, and about halfway through, she thought she lost her wallet.  She wanted to get on the next T we passed to get home and see if she'd left it in her apartment, and I couldn't fathom not finishing what I started.  When she told the story to our friends later, she gestured at me with a nod of her head: "...And (contemptuously) Rudy over here wouldn't let us stop."  I took it as a compliment.  In a related story, Kate once had me record Fortune's speech for her cell phone greeting.  (After Rudy uncharacteristically skips practice, the groundskeeper lets him have it: "You're five-foot-nothing!  A-hundred-and-nothing!  And you got hardly a speck of athletic ability!"  I could go on.)

When I was pregnant for the second time last year, (and, by the way, enjoying stuffing my face carte blanche - pregnant people: eat whatever you want, while you can) Todd and I happened to find Rudy on television one night.  Just at the point where the small defensive player leads his Notre Dame teammates onto the field.  ("Are you ready for this, Champ?"  "I've been ready for this my whole life.")  I turned to Todd and said, "Hey, if we have a boy, let's name him Rudy!"  Todd wasn't that into it.  But after the ultrasound, when we learned we were having another girl, Todd mysteriously claimed that he had the perfect name.  Then he revealed it: Rudy.

And so it was.  No doubt, in about seven or eight years, Rudy will look at me incredulously and say, "You mean you named me after a boy?  A football player?"  Todd's brother Chris joked that Rudy's friends will mock her when she has to miss a get-together: "What's the matter?  You got practice or something?"  But already, she is a Rudy.  She was a Rudy the moment she was born, actually, which was a refreshing change for us because Marley didn't have a real name until she was a day old.  Todd and I had a list about forty names long when I was pregnant with Marley, and we had just narrowed it to three when I went into labor.  But Marley is a Marley and Rudy is a Rudy.  Those are going to be some fun names for me to yell at the playground when it's time to go home.

It should be noted that Rudy Huxtable doesn't hurt.  That one of Todd's favorite Clash songs is "Rudie Can't Fail."  In the past few months, we've watched You Tube editions of "Fat Albert" to reacquaint ourselves with the orange-cap-, purple-vest-wearing Rudy.  We've downloaded Desmond Dekker's "Rudy Got Soul" and John Mellencamp's "Rooty Toot Toot."  But these are, in my mind, footnotes.  Rudy is named after a character in my absolute favorite football movie.  Sometimes when I burp her, I chant her name: "Ru-dy.  Ru-dy.  Ru-dy."  I can't help myself.  And I know a lot of other people will chant her name some day.  Many days.  For ridiculous achievements, and maybe, for outstanding ones.  That's my girl.