G-girl arrives

the breaking of waters is the poetic euphemism people like to use for the amniotic fluid... ah well, nevermind. because of this my mother lugged me outta bed at 3:30am to make the trek to the hospital determined to have a wee bairn by lunchtime. as we crossed the cooper river to mt. pleasant i was so moved by the water i came up with this little ditty...

Flow gently, sweet Afton! amang they green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary's asleep by the murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

actually this is verse by Robert Burns about a small river that flows through the southwest of scotland. this was part of the inspiration for my middle name; which could not have been given at a better time. here i was a good half-hour after birth and i am subjected to the final parental negotiations of my ex-uteran tag. so, no longer a glint in the eye or a spark of an idea, with a squeak and a whiff of dry-erase marker, my name and vital statistics were etched into reality:

greta afton overcash
06.06.2007
11:58 am
mt. pleasant, sc
7 lb 5 oz
19.25 in
brown
blue

some explanation of my name for the curious (those not interested should skip to page 24 now):
greta has a nordic ring to it, and rightfully so. it is common in scandinavia and germanic-speaking countries and is a diminutive form of margaret which came from the original greek name, margarita. my parents like to tell people the name is a nod toward the germanic heritage of the overcash clan, or maybe that it was borrowed from the street we live on: st margaret street. none of these are true, in fact the main reason for the name greta is because, well, they just liked it. after months of trying to find a name to recognize the impression scotland made on my parents, my dad discovered the name afton while going through a list of scottish rivers. turns out it was a fairly popular first name in the early 1900s in the US and several towns are named after the river... probably because it was made famous or infamous by robbie burns poem, "sweet afton" (1791). so, there we have it: greta afton. by the way, the name overcash, as everyone knows, is anglicanized german and was originally something like oberkirch in olden times.

~~greta