One Month of Violet

One month ago, a girl named Violet was born in a town once famous for the horticulture of the flowers after which she was named.  The name was chosen by her father, who proposed it as a possible moniker late in the pregnancy.  The mother agreed almost immediately, won by a name that was simultaneously  straightforward yet romantic, having connections to art, spiritualism, literature, and being somewhat rare since the 1910s.  As we are back in the early teens, it seems a good time to revive

I am your mother, Greg is your father, and you are Violet.  These posts are meant for you, as a document of your development.  They will also recall my experience as a parent, as unexpected as that was.

When I say this is unexpected, it is not because you are unwanted.  Quite to the contrary, we love you very much.  When your father & I met, in the glamourous East Village of the city of New York, we were decidedly agreed in remaining child-free.  We lived a life of self-involved decadence, dislocation and frivolity that did not include space for infant care.  If we were to be up at 5 AM, it would be to watch the moon set, not to change a nappy.  I was an artist who kept a day job which allowed me the time and flexibility to travel,  Greg was a musician in a band, a writer, and generally tortured soul who worked with people attempting to detox from heroin.

Within a year, we were living a different life in a rural portion of NYS.  I was in school for nursing, G was working on degrees in english lit & education, and we discovered the intoxicating effect of oxygen.  We refocused on each other, married on the top of one of the mountains which create the Shawangunk ridge, and became a family of two plus rescued monk parrot, Louis.  We bought a house built in 1963 and rescued a mutt who we named Lola.  My realization that G was a remarkable fellow gave me a feeling of cohesion that I had lacked for much of my adult life.

And then there was you.  I have never witnessed a personal pregnancy test switch to positive so rapidly.  Five weeks in was the estimate of my GYN.  I sent a photo of the test to G, who called to report his excitement.  Something had changed inside of our relationship.

It was love, it was you.

It has been a pleasure meeting you.