I have always despised pink.

Maybe it's because my mother didn't let me pick out my own clothes until I broke down sobbing in K-Mart, heartbroken at the prospect of a polyester pantsuit instead of the required pair of big-bell Levis. Or it could be the crystalline memory of being mocked at a junior high dance because my mother had insisted that a big pink Christmas bow atop my head was just the right touch. Perhaps it has something to do with the tight pink mohair sweater that Mom proudly bought me one year, which not only made me look like a particularly garish lady of the night but shed huge handfuls of fluff wherever I went, making me feel like a walking sinus infection.

So when I got the phone call from the lab telling me that the baby I was carrying was a girl, the second thing I did -- after pumping my fist in the air in triumph and yelling, "Yes!" -- was to declare that she would never, under any circumstances, wear pink.

Naturally, this created a few wee difficulties with my mother. This is a strong woman, a self-declared feminist, a great role-model who I love to distraction. This is also the same woman who bought me clothes covered with embossed kittens and glitter paint during the years when I wore black exclusively. Some things are just hard-wired in some people, I guess, and despite years of evidence to the contrary, my mother still emphatically believes that little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, and that they look nicest of all in pink.

Throughout my pregnancy I busily shopped and nested (in between napping and eating), taking care that the baby's room would be sunny and welcoming and filled with primary colors. I carefully tucked away the flood of pinkness my mother mailed in a tsunami of packages into bottom drawers and closet shelves with just the merest of shudders. After I gave birth, I couldn't help but notice that my daughter's name card was, in fact, pink, but chalked it up to the need for clarity in the hospital. So much easier for visitors to tell one baby from another by a simple color-coding system, than by, say unswaddling each baby and taking a look for yourself.

Once home, it took about five minutes for me to realize that in the grand scheme of things, keeping my daughter dressed in anything that wasn't pink was not as big a priority as I had thought. When you've got a screaming baby covered in poop, spit and strained peas, you pretty much go with whatever's clean and within arms reach. And if it's pink, so be it.

A few weeks into settling in and learning how to be Mommy, Daddy and Baby, my mother flew up to visit. She'd managed to restrain herself, and had only spent one month's salary on gifts for the baby, and remarkably, only one of the little outfits was pink.

"I know you said no pink," she said shyly, "But this was so cute I couldn't resist." And she was right. It was cute. It was a darling little pantsuit with a soft, fleecy top in the very palest pink, and it was just the right size. So when it was time to change the baby again -- about two minutes as I recall, due to infants' alarming tendency to explode at both ends nearly constantly -- I put her in to the cute new outfit Grandma had brought.

And it looked fabulous.

Wouldn't you just know it? It turns out that pink is absolutely, without a doubt, the most flattering color that my daughter can wear. It brings out the blue in her eyes, the flush in her cheeks, enhances the ringlets in her hair, and makes her look even more gorgeous than usual. Years later, at the ripe old age of five and half, I usually let her choose her own clothes. And of course she loves pink, just like Grandma.

Probably serves me right.