I learned something yesterday, something important. You think you’re prepared to meet your new grandchild for the first time. You play the scene in your head over and over, imagining how your heart will beat uncomfortably quickly when you see the round of his forehead, the soft fold of his chin, how your eyes will fill with salty tears that will spill on to your cheeks, how you’ll bend powerlessly into the weight of the unconditional love you are swaddling, a physical presence held close in arms that enwrap and protect.
I wasn’t incorrect in my thoughts, what I have described was there in abundance, the actuality as overwhelmingly beautiful as the imagined. What I didn’t quite anticipate was the way that meeting has changed everything. Nothing in life can ever be the same again. Harris was born and so was I, a rebirth of who I am, how I can be defined, the person I will be going forward. A new generation stretches beyond my fingertips, my family history being forged all around me, the footsteps of what will ultimately be someone else’s past being celebrated in my present and future.
The tree of life is budding, blooms are searching for light and the sun is beginning its steady climb beyond the shadows.
I’m not just a mother anymore, I am grand mother, such a monumental term, a noun of some magnitude. I hope I can live up to everything it demands.
Margot McCuaig 