The "Miller Mark"

I learned an interesting little piece of family history this week.

Katie Sue has a strawberry birthmark "stork bite" on the back of her head/neck. I have a few cafe au lait marks and several of my kids have them too, including one on the upper right quadrant of the back that my half-sister, my mom, my brother and I all have, but I think this is the first of our kids to have a strawberry birthmark, and definitely the first to have one on the back of the neck/lower head.

We were over at my mom's Monday (while Jeff got tax deadline work done) and my mom said, "Oh, she has a Miller Mark!" I said, "Yeah, she has a little birthmark; what's a Miller Mark?"

My mom explained that so many of the Millers (my maternal grandma's maiden name) had these strawberry birthmarks on the back of the head/neck that my great-grandpa always referred to them as "Miller Marks" and would remark on it when a baby in the family was born with one.

So there you go- she may not have the birthmark that many of the rest of us in my generation and my kids' generation share, but she has a Miller Mark. The funniest part is that this first child to have a Miller Mark is the one who is named after that particular great-grandma- the grandma who was a Miller is my grandma Katie! (Katie Sue- Katherine Susanna- is named after both my grandmas, who are Catherine Veronica and Mary Katherine, but the nickname Katie is after my Grandma Katie- both my grandmas go by nicknames of their middle names.)