It has been quite a while, I know. I didn't mean for it to have taken so long since my last entry. Lost interest, time, life. I guess those will have to be my excuses. A lot has happened since then.
The biggest event has been the discovery that at any minute rhe phone will ring and we will hear the voice of our daughter or our son in law announcing they have become parents. Today is the due date--February 10, 2015. When that call comes it will mean of course, that we will have become grandparents. We are a good deal more excited than this narrative might indicate but it has been many months since we were initially told and the baby has so far been mostly just a growing bump, a trip to Target to purchase a crib and a baby shower hosted by long-time friends of our daughter and her husband. The reality for me will really kick in when we get that call to come to Seattle to meet the newest member of the family--our grandbaby.
It has mostly been a concept so far. Far distant when compared to our own experience becoming parents some 30+ years ago. That was real. We lived everyday of it. The doctor visits, the living with the experience everyday. It was close up and intimate on a level that can only be that for the couple going through it. It seems so long ago. Almost another life.
I've thought back a lot to our own experience with those precious moments. Like a slide show, for those who remember the Kodak carousel projectors. Each succeeding clunk of the projector flashes another frame of life up on the wall of our memory. Clunk. The moment in the Good Earth restaurant in Santa Clara, California, a few blocks from where I worked at the time, where we met my wife's parents and announced that they were going to be grandparents. Clunk. Spooning in bed late at night and feeling the first movements our daughter made in mama's tummy. Clunk. The photo of a very healthy and pregnant wife sitting in the sunshine at an outdoor concert a few weeks before the birth. Then there was the realization that this was all about to get really serious when we headed for the hospital. Those two people looked so young, were young, too young to become parents. So long ago.
So, we wait because there is nothing else to do for us but wait. Anticipation. A sort of nervous excitement is what I feel when I think about this new phase of life. Is it a boy? Is it a girl? What name will we use when we greet this little one into the world? What name will we hear when this little one calls out to us? What experiences are ahead for us together. More photos flash in my mind. Clunk. Raking leaves in grandma's front yard. Clunk. A cozy bedroom filled with silly doo-dads. Clunk. Christmas mornings to remember. Clunk. Playing school. Reading bedtime stories on the white polka dotted sky blue couch with the smell of her clean wet hair and that flannel night gown, those tiny toes sticking out the bottom. Trips to Disneyland. Tide pool adventures at Asilomar. What memories will our grand baby look back on, will we look back on? I'll get back to you on that when we've made a few memories of our own.
1 comment:
Michael and Leslie, You are about to experience something so wonderful that you will be caught off guard. When you had your daughter, you were really involved at every level. But, when your daughter has a child, you will want to a) have it for her, b) be in complete awe that you are now grandparents and are witnessing a new generation, c) think it is the most wonderful and miraculous event, and d) feel such strong emotions that you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Holding that tiny gift of a child for the first time is truly a miracle. I’ll be thinking of you.
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