a pin head holds a bouquet.
Surely the most notable of these was in 2008 when my daughter Moxie was born. See, she was due on February 14th,and I went into labor at 1 a.m. on that day, but deep in my heart I didn't want her to have to share a birthday with a holiday. My birthday is often on Thanksgiving and it is a mixed blessing, a great opportunity to be together with family, but also it is a rare year that it gets celebrated as an independent event. Really, that's fine, but to have a day that isn't mixed up or competing for attention allows for more possibility. Also, we had been out to dinner at an Italian restaurant shortly before I went into labor and our server said that if M was in fact born on Valentine's Day she should be called Valentina and my beloved husband went with it. Through much of my twenty-four hour labor, mainly the final hour in the birthing tub (in the room that is now my daughters' bedroom), he talked shop about how we were going to call her Moxie Valentina Amore Zises. Yup, he thought it was a hoot, and it was, at least it kept other's amused and allowed me a moment's humor reprieve from the intensity of crowning and the ring of fire. But I held out and didn't start pushing until a little after midnight on the 15th, and so this sweet little girl slipped into our watery world at 12:27 a.m. on the 15th and became Moxie Leil instead of Valentina. That was a Valentine's Day to remember, one when my little love child was swimming toward the outside world and I was brimming with love and so was the rest of the world. Was it all the love in the air that encouraged her to slip sleeping into this world? Perhaps.