Grandmother

"A child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts." W. Wordsworth I am your grandmother. I spent 24 years making parenting mistakes, so I think I'm pretty well trained now, pretty worn down, open-minded and accepting. I think we'll be good friends. At sixteen, your mother said she was having a baby and held up to me the blue pastic device that tested her urine stream like when she held up the blue ribbon she won in kindergarten for the best easter bunny nest made from marshmallows and dyed yellow coconut. Then she threw the blue device out into the space between us on the bed, like it was the best card in her deck, her ace in the hole. Your father waited in the other room sitting in the thick silence, afraid to breathe and miss my response. You and your mother did all the work, but I was there at your birth, Standing alongside, coaching your mother to good contractions until I was exhausted from gritting my teeth and pushing too. And your dad was there, too, but closer to the business end so he could be the first to know the sex. An unsolicited psychic had told us you would be a girl, and when your dad was told, he sulked all day like it was a conspiracy between the women to produce only other woman. He wanted another guy, someone to give the men the edge, a male child. When your mother's body could keep you from the world no longer, your head appeared, eyes tightly shut and a pout on your lips. Your dad was watching closely, the shoulder, the belly and then his arms flew up in the air like he'd made the touchdown and he cried, "It's a Boy, I told you, I told you," like he and I had placed a bet. But then he saw how much I could love the boy child. I'm a pretty good grandmother, and I think we'll be good friends.