She’s Here!
My lifelong wish has finally been fulfilled.
All that will be is already done.
~ William Prince
She was mine before I knew she was mine.
She was mine when I had lost hope of having a child.
I carried her in my body for nine months.
I carried her in my heart for years before.
She has been sewn in the tapestry of my being since the beginning of me.
Introducing Marigold Alice Robin Howard, the dream of my heart.
A decade ago, I began a list of baby names.
At the very top of that list was Marigold. It was a name that immediately captured my attention after hearing it in an episode of Downton Abbey. Over the years, I added other names to the list.
But I always returned to Marigold.
It’s just unique enough to satisfy my whimsy, and comfortable enough for my less adventurous personal palate.
She’ll likely never meet another ‘Marigold’ during her school days, but it won’t be mispronounced when attendance is called. And there’s many nickname options to explore. Goldie and Margot are top of my list, but we’ll see what suits her best.
While these are fine enough reasons to name a child, they are the logical ones; the reasons we cite when justifying something rooted deep within the heart.
More recently, my mom passed along a box of my childhood items.
At the time, I was in the thick of fertility treatments and the mundane busyness of life, so I tucked the box out of sight and out of mind.
It wasn’t until I started purging my own house in preparation of the baby that I came across the forgotten box. It mostly contained items destined for recycling.
Except for one unlikely treasure.
Tucked neatly into the pages of an old book, I found an index card with my eight year-old handwriting and drawing: a cartoonish illustration of me—complete with green eyes and thick bangs—with my tiny crayon-drawn hand extending itself to an orange flower labeled “Marigole.”
In all the house moves and purges of childhood items, my mom doesn’t know how this little index card evaded the recycling bin for more than thirty years. But we agree that this treasure found me with the most perfect timing.
I can see the threads of my life weaving the story of her, right from the beginning of my life.
She’s here now. Right where she’s meant to be.
