It still shocks me every now and again that he's our son, that he's here in the world and that we made him. One of the biggest parts about having a child is deciding on a name. His name is his identity. He'll have it for the rest of his life and J and I took choosing his name very seriously.
Before knowing the gender of our first born we had started talking names and it's a good thing Mark is a boy because we were lightyears away from deciding on a girls but came up with a boys relatively easily. We both agreed early on that we didn't want something trendy. We didn't want something that our child would have to spell every time they gave their name. We didn't want something that would continuously be mispronounced. We didn't want something that would fit a child but not carry through to adulthood. We wanted something classic and also something with meaning.
His middle name, Jameson, is a bit of a tribute to our honeymoon in Ireland and a bit "just because we liked it". We had picked his first name and wanted something with more than two syllables (okay maybe that was just me and my a-type personality). Jameson was easy and simple and just fell into place.
It's his first name, Mark, that holds all the meaning. I've written about it many times before but my dad passed away years ago and it's been one of the toughest parts of my life (and continues to be to this day). His name was Mark. And after thinking about it for only a short time we knew our son would be named after his grandpa. It just felt right. It's an honor to an amazing man, something our son can hopefully take pride in and it makes my heart swell each and every time I call him by his first name.
And to make it that much more sweet, I truly believe my dad knows his grandson carries on the memory of him. During my labor with Mark, after settling in with my epidural and beginning the process of delivering our first born, I asked J to turn on some music for me on his phone. My request was the James Taylor station on Pandora. Carolina in My Mind was the first song that played and I cried. It was the song from our wedding. The song I danced with my mom to, the song I would have been dancing with my dad to, THE song that is the epitome of my dad to me. And in that moment, early in the morning on September 25th, just moments before meeting my son, I knew my dad was there welcoming his grandson into the world with us.
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