April 28, 2013
Dear Tallulah,
First of all, I
know your name is not Tallulah. I
don’t know what your name is because your parents have decided to keep that a
secret before you decide when you will be born. I don’t remember when we first began calling you Tallulah,
but it kind of became a habit.
So now that we got
that out of the way, let me introduce myself. I am your maternal grandma. I don’t know yet what you are going to call me. I think I should let you decide. My real name is Jeannie. Well, actually, my real name is Jean
Alice, but nobody calls me that, except for occasionally, your great
grandma. Your great grandma knows
what she wants you to call her- “G-G”– that’s short for Great Grandma. You will like her a lot. She’s very interesting and very funny,
and also very short. G-G is going
to be turning 90 years old in November and you will be at her very special
birthday party.
I have been writing
a blog about my journey to becoming your grandma ever since you were the size
of a bell pepper in your mommy's belly. A blog is short
for Web Log. It’s where writers,
some famous and some not famous- like me, write narratives about anything and publish them on
the Internet. Anyone in the world
can read a blog if they go on the Internet.
Even though you are
my first granddaughter, this is not my first blog. My first blog is finished- it was about my journey as the
mother of the bride. It was all
about the year leading up to your parent’s wedding. One day, we will read it together. I hope you like it.
Anyway, I try to
write an entry in my blog every Sunday. However, this Sunday I am so tired because I went to a beautiful wedding last
night and I danced in very uncomfortable platform shoes all through the night with
all my friends. I didn’t get home
until one o’clock in the morning. I
had a wonderful time, though. The
bride’s name was Jennifer and I know her since she was a little girl. Her parents, Barbara and Eric, are your
Grandpa’s and my very close friends.
Jennifer was such a beautiful bride- her wedding gown was so elegant; it was made of lace and had rhinestones
around the waist- just enough “bling”
as your mother would say. She also
wore a beautiful silk flower in her hair.
You will be wearing a lot of flowers like that in your hair because your
mother loves them. The groom was very
handsome and his name was Eric, too- just like Jennifer’s father.
This wedding was so
special because Jennifer’s grandmother and great grandmother were there to
celebrate her special day. I hope
I will be at your wedding some day.
That would make all my dreams come true. Jennifer’s great grandmother is 106 years old. If G-G makes it to your wedding and you
get married when you’re about 25, she would be 115 years old. That would make the news.
Weddings are so
delightful, but they are exhausting too.
My feet still hurt from the shoes I was wearing. They were silver shoes with a lot of
bling that looked very pretty, but by the end of the night they felt like I was walking on wooden blocks strapped to my feet with tight
rubber bands. When you’re a girl,
and you will learn this one day- dressing up might look good, but it doesn’t
always feel good. I learned this
at a very young age, when my mother would dress me up in dresses with itchy crinoline
slips underneath and stiff patent leather Mary–Jane shoes. Ugh! – I hated that, especially if the
dress had frilly lace on it that would chafe my neck.
Most of the time,
getting dressed up ends in some minor disaster for me. Last night I wore a beaded plum cocktail dress
and something got caught on it. I think it might have been the chain from my evening purse, which broke, too. Just before we were going in to the wedding ceremony, I looked down and there was a very long piece of thread hanging off my
dress and beads falling on the floor. I asked my friends if they had a scissor.
They just looked at their teeny tiny evening purses and then at me as if to
say- are you kidding me? I did finally get a scissor in the ladies
room, because at weddings and other fancy affairs, there will always be a
basket of stuff for those lady calamities– filled with all the things that ladies need
like tampons, which you’re still too young to know about, extra stockings,
hairspray, hairbrushes, bobby pins, and sewing kits with scissors. I don’t think the men’s room has any
baskets because getting dressed up for men is not as complicated. Everything is more complicated when
you’re a girl- you’ll see. But, in retrospect, these complications end up as funny stories, although, we're not laughing at the time they're happening to us.
I can still hear
the music in my head that I was dancing to. And I ate much too much food because there was so much of it
and it was all too delicious not to eat.
This is why I couldn’t think of anything to write except a letter to
you. All I think about lately is
you. I wake up every morning,
knowing that I’m one day closer to finally seeing your perfect face, holding
your delicate hands and kissing those precious little feet. I have felt those tiny hands and teeny
feet poke out through your mommy’s big belly. I have also seen your darling face, hands and feet in
sonograms, but that doesn’t come close to the real thing. My two friends, Roselee and Janet, kept
showing the real thing last night at the wedding– they had pictures and videos
of their grandchildren on their iPhones.
Every time they showed them, we all oohed and ahhed and kvelled like middle-aged
grandmas do (in between the oohing and ahhing and kvetching from our evening shoes and uncomfortable spanx). And then they would
look at me and say, “Soon it will be you!” with their voices sounding 10 octaves
higher.
Soon doesn’t feel
soon enough. We still have about
six weeks left of this journey- the waiting journey, until you decide when you will be born. That's when the best journey will begin. Then, I will not call you Tallulah any more; I will finally
be able to say your name.
With love and hugs
and kisses to infinity and back times 1 zillion,
Grandma Jeannie or whatever you will call me.
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