Red Sunflowers

My favorite flower is the sunflower.  They're tall, big, and bright, following the sun with their brown faces.  My favorite type of sunflower is the red sunflower.  To narrow it down, my favorite red sunflower is my son, Semaj Sarian Howard.  My little red and brown baby, pictured against a bright blue blanket.

Semaj has a very special genus.  His father held that name as a special moniker for himself that most refused to use.  Even I was skeptical at first.  Yet before the name was finalized, he asked me if Semaj could be the first name instead of the middle name and I said yes, because if we had a son, it would be his son too.

We chose baby names early.  I'd had my name chosen for a possible boy child years before I even met a man that I could hold deep enough affection for to allow for the possibility of children.  That name was Sarian.  It is special to me because it comes from Sariah, my middle name.  I always preferred my middle name to my first one and so I wanted to share it with a future baby.

Semaj carries a very special name, very special to his parents.  Names are important to me and must be chosen with care.  The sound, the rhythm, the initials.  Semaj's name even has the same set of syllables as mine so it sounds like mine without being my name.  We both share the S.S. initials.  I still end with a C, but one day I hope to carry the same last initial as my son.

Semaj is also James backward, a mirror image.  James is his father's name.  In hindsight, it's a sweet memory for me because he truly was so similar to his father in looks, even at almost 17 weeks.  The shape of his hands and fingers, his fingernails, and his long feet with the last two toes being the same size.  He was long too, and with his large hands and feet, Semaj was well on his way to being a tiny James.

Semaj Sarian Howard is my very favorite red sunflower.  He is my first pregnancy.  He is my firstborn son.  He is dead.