First Grandchild

GRAHM     B.1979

Tiny blob of unfinished flesh--blond, pink, pale, in such contrast to the robust dark-skinned babies in the hospital nursery. “Not bad-lookin’ for a white kid” the nurses said.
    Eyes as big as saucers soberly studied my face as I got my first glimpse of immortality. There was my father’s face--and mine--in miniature: snub-nosed and round.  He barely filled my hands--this four-pound morsel.
    Of course I cried. I’d been crying for three weeks since he was born--tears of joy just for him being; tears of anxiety and fear over his too-early birth and the scary conditions of his mom’s lifestyle; tears of relief that he seemed to be surviving it all. Not easily or frequently given to hysterics, (my children might argue that statement) I had come close when the word came of his precipitous arrival, occasioned by an electric shock.
    Upon hearing of his small birth-weight, twenty-two years rolled back for me and I was once again watching two other tiny premature babies--my first two sons--struggle to survive, both unsuccessfully. But you did survive, Grahm Scott, child of grace. If I could only have had a glimpse of the  handsome strapping man you would become, full of brightness, talent and charm--a musician, actor, artist--my worries would have died a-borning.

TYSON  JOHN     B.1982

He came into our lives and our hearts, with not-quite-three years spent on this planet, and already so hurt by it--his brain and body stunted; his ability to reason forever taken away. They say that some fetal alcohol babies actually smell pickled when  they’re born.
    It’s hard to forgive the woman who marked him like that; harder still to forgive the ensuing neglect and abuse that left Tyson even less able to cope with life–-nearly deaf, and deprived of stimulation by his birth mother’s habit of  covering his crib with a blanket (in hopes that he’d sleep all of the time). My daughter saved him from further abuse. I should not have been surprised--she was always the one who brought home stray kittens.
    As a young mother, I had always thought that someday I’d foster-mother children less fortunate than mine. My heart just seemed too big for the few that nature, or God, or biology, had allowed me to have as my own. A little of that desire was satisfied by caring for my two nephews, while my single-parent sister worked, or took week-end breaks--once even taking one of them for a few months. But by the time my own three were grown, I was heavily involved in grand-parenting and earning my living. So the time was never right.
    However, the genes were hard at work in my daughter, Lisa. By the time she was in her mid-twenties, she was fulfilling my long-ago dreams of being a foster-mother. Two of her first charges were a  four-year-old girl and her younger brother, a tiny boy with dark, spiky hair, blue eyes, and the longest eyelashes you ever saw. When serious, Tyson can look into your very being with those eyes; when jolly, the eyes crinkle, the dimples appear, and you can’t resist being caught up in his infectious giggles.
    Totally literal, totally ingenuous, Tyson came, he conquered our hearts, and he stayed. Always his grandma by love, I became his real grandma when first Lisa, then later her husband, adopted him. Love is a worker of magic, a healing force, but some wounds are too deep--as deep as Tyson’s eyes.

        
    MARIKJE  LYN     B.1982

    Her delicate face,
    Her eternal feminine grace,
    Echo another tawny-haired
    dancing creature,
    Who danced through my life,
    barely a moment ago.

    The first flower to grow in my garden,
    Now, through this
    her first flower,
    Gives me the gift of time recaptured,
    And a vision of immortality.


DANIEL    B. 1985

Soon after Danny, my blond and beautiful grandson, came into our lives, I had a sudden call to come care for him and his brothers while his mom, my daughter Lisa, was hospitalized. I didn’t know him well yet; I didn’t know that his fight with his inner devils--a legacy from severe early childhood abuse--manifested often in night terrors. So I was caught off-guard when I woke to his screams. My door flew open, I flew up to a sitting position on my floor mattress, and he literally leapt into my lap as if catapulted! I’ve often said, since that night, that he landed in my heart when he landed in my lap.
    Smart as a whip, Danny worked valiantly on his journey toward wellness and I’m so proud of his deep insights. After seven years of being my grandson-by-love, he, like his half-brother, Tyson, became my grandson-by-law.

ANNALISE ROSE     B.1989

Annalise was the only one of my grandchildren whom I got to welcome on her first day out in the world. So I can personally avow that she came out of the womb knowing just exactly who she was, determined that the world would know it, too--shades of the mother who organized all the neighborhood kids, who talked her high school into letting her pioneer a home-study curriculum in her last semester, and who taught and lectured on the art of macrame at age thirteen. With the brilliance (and chin dimple) of her father, modulated by the gentleness and sweetness of her mother, Annalise is a power to be reckoned with--world, watch out!
    Destined to be the baby of the entire family for many years, Annalise, with her strong presence, brooks no foolish consideration of her as anything but a full, entitled member of the human race.
    The first time we really spent time alone together, an ordinary day was made into a shining jewel by her three-year-old observation, “We’re having a lovely day together, aren’t we, Grandma?”

I am so proud of them all and their achievements.
AND THEY ARE ALL ON FACEBOOK!
For the first time ever, I know where they are and what they're doing.