Hank Bug and Lila Bee

Back in another life, when 4am feed meant grabbing a slice of pizza on the way home from the bar and sleeping through the night meant rest uninterrupted by the amorous sounds of my roommate and her boyfriend, i met an impossibly cute boy with dark eyes and torturously irresistible dimples.  (If I had known then that one day I would be looking at his dimples on my daughter's face...)

Early one morning as we were lying around chatting about nothing, he asked me who my favorite author was.  Too nervous to think (a constant state during those early months - my heart perpetually racing, constantly catching my breath mid-sentence), I scanned the pile of books next to my bed and my eyes settled on a battered copy of the short stories of henry james that i had recently purchased at the used bookstore on bedford avenue.  "Henry James," I said.  And then I joked that my friend Ann called him Hank.  Or maybe it was Allen who said, "good old Hank."

The bug part is harder to trace but easier to explain - I was allen's fidgety, wide-eyed bug.

At some point the two merged and I became Hank the Bug.

Fast-forward eight years or so.  I'm eight months pregnant and dressed up, absurdly, as a bumble bee for Halloween.  Two weeks later when our little girl came out with big eyes, a round belly, squirming limbs and a little stinger of a tushie, we knew that she was our lila bee.