Moleskin 2.2: I Am Named

From day one, perhaps in the first moments after birth, I was given a name that I was regularly, determinedly called: Jonathan Andrew Vold.  The family name, from my father’s side, was taken from Lake Lisavold southwest of Trondheim, Norway, assumed by my grandfather John O. Vold. He decided propitiously, coming here alone at a relatively young age, that he would leave his family name, Slupphaug, behind. The middle name, from my mother’s side, was the common name of my mother’s maternal grandfather Andrias Loftness, the youngest of my great great grandfather Gregorius’s twelve children and the only one born in America. The first name, Jonathan, means gift from God, probably preconceived but fitting to how the doctor was able to unwrap the umbilical cord from around my neck in those first seconds of life. Or so I am told.