‘Grandmother’ Grows Into Favorite Word

There was the day not too many years past when the word “grandmother” made me shudder, the way you do when fingernails scrape down a blackboard.

It was a word reserved for old women. Said with reverence, with respect. But for old women.

Now, six grandchildren later, that very same word is my favorite of all words. Nothing sounds sweeter.

People, especially elderly grandmothers, used to coo at me and my first baby, “My dear, you don’t look old enough to have a baby.” I wasn’t. I was only 19.

By the time I was 24 and the mother of four - two boys and two girls - the grandmas of Spokane would say, “My dear, you don’t look old enough to have four children.”

Then came the years when I, myself, said, “I’m too young to have a boy be so tall”; “I’m too young to have sons who shave”; “I’m too young to have a boy with a moustache - why don’t you shave?”

Now, I’m telling our oldest son, “I’m too young to have a boy with gray hair. Why don’t you dye it?”

The second boy is balding - and what can a mother say about that? He thinks his thinning hair bothers only him.

Through the years, it’s the boys who created most of my “too youngs.” Although, there was the time when our oldest daughter became engaged to be engaged when she was in high school. With that heart-stopping announcement, the least of concerns created with her teeny-tiny diamond ring was that I might be too young. She was the one who was too young.

I’d far rather have moustaches above the upper lips of both boys than one engaged-to-be-engaged ring on a daughter’s finger.

We survived the ring crisis, but it aged me considerably, making me not nearly so young.

True to form, it was the boys who first made me a grandma - when I was way too young.

At the announcement of another generation on its way, a knot in my stomach dueled with a flutter in my heart. The dread embedded in the word “grandmother” strangely began to soften and assume a new hue.

There were nine glorious months to get used to the word. Plus, the baby wouldn’t talk for many more months after he or she arrived.

A baby-in-the-making uses its allotted nine months to develop into a human being. A first-time mother-to-be uses the nine months to prepare for this new life that she’s heard will forever alter her own life.

A new grandma-to-be spends every waking minute of those nine months bracing herself for not only a new phase of her life, but a new title, a new name. Phases aren’t only for children.

Then came the day.

My arms still remember holding Michelle just hours after she was born. She was a tiny bundle, wrapped so snugly in a pink blanket, with only her sweet, pink face showing - the most beautiful face in the world (aside from the four other most beautiful faces of my own children).

All I could focus on in that hospital room was this baby’s cherubic face that began to blur as I blinked away the tears that pooled and spilled from my eyes as the seconds clocked on.

Standing beside me, rubbing my shoulders as I cradled his baby, was my son, Tim. A sense of continuity I’d never before experienced was created in those precious moments: The electricity of it surged from Tim’s strong hands kneading my shoulders down through my arms and wrapped itself gently around this tiny baby who so profoundly added to our lives just by being born.

When I looked at April, Michelle’s mama, and saw her smile, I knew she, too, felt the experience.

It was a moment I hope never to forget. Even now, the thought of it creates a teary well of happiness.

The sweetest words to my ears these days are those when 5-year-old Axton says, without any apparent reason, “Grandma, you know what?” “What?” I’ll answer, “I love you,” he’ll reply.

Whenever I talk to any of the grandchildren on the telephone, we end our brief conversations with me saying, “I love you,” followed by, “I love you, too, Grandma.”

Even Megan, 23 months old, knows the “I love you” routine. It doesn’t matter that no one else besides family could possibly understand her. She knows what she’s saying - and so do I. And with each repetition, the word “grandma” becomes clearer.

It makes my heart sing.

, DataTimes