Autumn Rose

October 24, 2010

Thirty-three years ago today, also a Sunday, as I recall, my mother walked in the door of the house where my husband and three year-old son and I were living at the time, and where I happened to be in the early stages of labor for my second child, with two late-blooming pink roses she had picked from the bush next door. One was a full, round bloom, the other, branching from the same stem, was a tiny bud. She handed the small bouquet to me and said, "The big one is for you - big and round - and the bud is for the little girl you'll give birth to today." This was well before the days of being able to know the gender of your unborn child, so it was a guess on her part, but indeed, my mother's intuition was correct (proving again that mother is always right), as later that evening, in the upstairs bedroom of the house at #25 School Street, my daughter was born.

When Maria was growing up, I would return to that same rose bush on her birthday and pick a pink rose for her birthday table. She's been gone from home for many years now, and we haven't lived in that house since that one winter, but I still find my way to the rose bush on School Street every year on or near October 24th, and there's always at least one pink rose blooming.

In retrospect, it would have been entirely logical to name our autumn baby girl Autumn Rose, but I've always liked the biblical names. There are many Marys and Maries in our line, and I love the name Maria. Maria is not only a beautiful sounding name ("Say it loud and there's music playing..."), but is also a nod to the Italian side of the family. I would learn many years later that my great grandmother Sara Boylston, the woman after whom I was named, had a mother named Maria. I love this symmetry - especially since it was by accident -  that Sara's mother's name was Maria, and now a few generations later, Maria's mother's name is Sara.

Maria has a brand new birthday twin, by the way, born this morning to Brook Olson and Clinton Fisher: a baby girl, Isabella. Congratulations to Brook and Clinton, and to Grandma Madeline Fisher who says that everyone is doing well and that Isabella is "definitely a cutie." 

I think a pink rose is in order.

#25 School Street, The Holmes Coffin House