Ahhh…day 2. Renewed vitality. We took a walk today, and Amber traveled farther than almost every other walk embarked upon during the latter half of her pregnancy. I’m already dreaming of the day when Koen and I might hike Landsend Peak, which waits with great patience in the distance.
I wasn’t so keen on including this photo, but Amber insisted, saying that “it’s such a clear show-and-tell of how Koen has daddy’s nose”. Oh boy.
The little love-king, Koen Aurelius, all swaddled up and ready to embrace the world.
In case you are curious about his name, here are some details:
After browsing the world-wide web for umpteen hours, we finally gave up the search. Not long after, Amber came up with “Koen”. We’d been contemplating a name that embodied both a sense of strength and beauty. It turns out that the name actually means “gallant” and “brave” in a couple of languages. It also comes close to the word “koan”, as in “zen koan”. A definition: “In Zen Buddhism, the Japanese term for the posing of baffling riddles or exercises that cannot be solved in a discursive or rational manner. They are intended to force the student into a corner, as it were, so that he/she will be open to the immediacy of enlightenment, or satori, as a subjective experience of one’s own Buddha nature.”
“Aurelius”, well, I’ve always loved the sound of this name. And then, a few years back, I fell in love with a quote by Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who wrote, nearly two millenia ago, the following:
“And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.”
The name carries the literal meaning of “golden” in the Latin language.
And lastly, “Widom” is passed down from my father. Thanks, pops! Originally, the name was “Widomlanski”, or some variation thereof.
To top it all off, a famous snippet from Romeo & Juliet:
“What’s in a name?
That which we call a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet.”
