And So We Wait...

Five more days until Spring arrives after a long, brutal and too-snowy winter.  I look out my kitchen window past Sonny, who sits guarding the house, propped comfortably on a pillow of the window seat.  Finally, I can see the grass on my front lawn thanks to the rain all day Saturday.  There’s only a few vestiges of the latest snowfall peaking out below the bushes.  In a couple of days it will be St. Patrick’s Day.  Corned beef and cabbage will be on special at the local food stores.  Green will be ubiquitous.  The trees will begin blooming, tulips and daffodils will start sprouting and the birds will be singing announcing the vernal equinox.  All this I can be sure of; the only thing I can’t be sure of is the day of my grandson’s birth, which can be anytime between now and early April.  And so we wait. 

Two things I will always remember awaiting the birth of my grandson is the long hard winter that preceded his birth, along with the long, hard pregnancy his mother had to endure.  Lindsay, not even 5 feet tall and maybe 96 pounds soaking wet when she’s not pregnant has a basketball shape protruding out of her slight frame.  Inside is a cute little mystery man.  His three-dimensional sonogram pictures look different from his older sister.  This is a very different pregnancy and a very difficult one for my daughter. 

Lindsay had three stomach surgeries before she was 30 years old.  One was at 19, when they removed her appendix, another was at 28 when they had to remove her bile duct, gall bladder and “re-design” her intestines.  Soon after that she had to have a surgical hernia repaired; therefore, she has a piece of mesh holding everything in.  This is tender territory when you are gestating another human being.  Her ob/gyn explained that she doesn’t have the muscles like other women because of her scar tissue and surgical hernia and that is what is causing her this pain.  She told me that even the water from the shower hurts her as it beats on her belly;  yesterday she described the pain as knives in her stomach. 

I can’t even say to her, “I know what you’re going through,” because other than sciatica, I had relatively easy pregnancies.  (Although, easy would not be the word I would want to use when recalling the nine months of producing another human being.)  The sleepless nights I could relate to, the hemorrhoids, the lack of bladder control- which unfortunately remains- all these things I could say, “I know.”  Except the pain.  It causes me to feel helpless and guilty all at once- which makes me realize, I really did become my mother.  Then I think, well isn’t this our job as mothers?- to take the pain away- to “fix” our children in any circumstance.  I remember once when my niece, Julianna, was little, she had hurt her finger.  My sister, Claire, whipped out the bandaids and Neosporin from her pocketbook in a split second.  I questioned her rhetorically, “You just carry that around with you?”  “Of course I do. I’m the mother of a small child,” she responded.  I thought to myself I must have missed that in the manual they never give you to read.  My own kids always used to tell me that I’m not a real mother just because I never have tissues on hand.  I surprise them sometimes by trying to remember to buy the small packages of Kleenex, and then struggle to retrieve them in the abyss of whatever size purse I am carrying. 

The only thing I can do is help out with Lexi, so now we have had two sleepovers, which my friends were shocked waited this long to occur.  I love the sleepovers- giving my granddaughter a bath and wrapping her in the towel well enough to take away her shivers and goose bumps, reading her her favorite book five to seven times then putting her in the pack and play as she holds about a dozen stuffed animals all at once.  I even love picking up and putting away her blocks after she dumped them on the rug the fourth time, cleaning the food that she doesn’t want and throws on the floor or trying to figure out how to fix the TV from whatever she touched on the remote.  I love how she loves my mother and calls out “Nanny” to make sure she’s paying attention to her, then runs over to hug her legs.  I love it all– 
Her passion for life, 
Her giggles, 
Her temper tantrums, 
Her boundless energy, 
Her twirling around until she gets dizzy on purpose, 
Her torturing my dog as she screams Dayeee for Sonny, 
The way she says “hot” when the microwave beeps, 
The way she sings the last word of every verse of a song, 
How she calls me Mimi over and over again, 
How she calls Mark Papa and just “Mi” for Aunt Kimmy, 
The mischievous glint in her eyes when she goes to touch something she knows she shouldn’t, 
How she opens the drawer in the kitchen where she knows I keep the cookies, 
The way she says “cheers” and clicks her cup or food to yours 
And especially the way she picks up her mommy’s shirt, kisses her belly and says “uh-ber”.  
I love it all because there is nothing in the world more amazing than being a grandparent, forget the seven wonders, this tops it all. 

So, that’s why, after a very long week of traveling, by train, car, plane, taking 10 o’clock evening flights to Syracuse and getting up at 5 the next morning, being pushed and shoved on a subway, sitting through traffic, sitting through meetings, running through and to school buildings to do presentations, I still make time to be a grandma.  And that’s why when I come home on a Friday and all I think I want to do is sit on my couch and stare into space, if my very pregnant daughter calls and says, Can you please watch Lexi for a little so I can get a foot massage?, without hesitation, I say, “Of course, honey.”  Because even though I am more exhausted than I ever thought I could possibly feel, my granddaughter somehow gives me the strength to move and move quite fast for an almost-59 year-old lady.  Forget energy drinks or caffeine, we should just bottle up the energy of a toddler to revive you.  And we should call it “Pure Joy”.  This is the secret to being a grandparent that everyone says- Wait, you’ll see, it’s just the best thing ever!

And so we wait.  Lindsay is 37 weeks pregnant now.  On her last visit to the doctor, this past Monday, she was almost 2 centimeters and 70–80% effaced- familiar vocabulary for mothers and grandmothers.  The doctor told her that if she makes this much progress this coming Monday (tomorrow), he might just bring her in and induce her because of her pain.  And even though she wants to be done with the pain, her first priority is that her son will be good and ready to be born.  That’s a good way to describe what a mother does, to be willing to suffer for the sake of her child.  And being a mother is what my daughter is best at.  There is no questioning that fact.  The only question that remains is when will Lexi's "uh-ber" be good and ready to be born?  And so we wait.