Grandmothers

I've been waiting a few weeks to post this blog.  I AM GOING TO BE A GRANDMOTHER!! MP and Josh are expecting their baby to arrive March 4.   I am very excited.  I heard his/her heartbeat today.  Wow!

I am sort of like a kid waiting for Christmas.  This is a role I have really wanted to play.  I have gotten a little practice with the sweet Davis girls, and I don't intend to change my relationship with them, but they are in Minnesota, and proximity makes it hard to have frequent times together.  

I've tried to analyze why I am so excited about becoming a grandmother.  I have a friend with 12 grandchildren whose husband said they should have skipped the kids and gone straight to grandkids.  So many of my friends are grandparents, and the reports are all the same...it's great.  You get to play and not discipline.  That's nice. 

My family provides a pretty steady supply of babies at family events, but the youngest one now is 5.   We're all excited for another one.  It is one more person to love. 

I think one reason I am so excited is because of the grandmother I had.  I called her Mae.  I adored her.  She was so much fun.  I always felt that Mae loved me unconditionally.  She thought I was great.  She gave everybody a nickname.  I was Mell, my older brothers were Pudd and Moochie.  You have to love someone who calls you those names.  She never kissed us on the face, but always on the back of our heads or necks.  She did not want to spread germs to us.  She let us take all the furniture off her big front porch and put it in the yard.  Then, we took the furniture our of her house and put that on the porch.  She had four o'clocks that bloomed outside her bedroom window, and petunias in wicker flower boxes on her porch.  She made great biscuits.  When she made them, she let us cut ours out with thimbles.  Our thimble biscuits looked like dirty little toes, but they were the best ever.  She played fruit basket turnover, poor kitty, rock school and 123 redlight.  I learned my multiplication tables from her.  She always had new crayons, paper, and plenty of supplies for our projects.  She let us make goulash ~ a combination of any and everything that came from her pantry.   I learned a lot about God and how to treat people, and why I Love Lucy was so funny from her.  Her life was never about herself.  I want to be that kind of grandmother, well, except for the goulash.  It is a wonder we didn't blow her house up.

I think the biggest reason I am so thrilled to be a grandmother is because MP and Josh get to be parents.  I have a friend who says that marriage is the last chance for people to really grow up.  I think parenting is.  Becoming a parent is the thing that helped me understand just how much my parents loved me.  It helped me understand in some small way, the love of God.  It taught me willful and joyful self-sacrifice.  It gave me something so much bigger than myself on which to focus.  Parenting drives me to my knees, and makes my heart soar. 

I am most thrilled that my children are going to experience their children. 

And, did I mention I AM GOING TO BE A GRANDMOTHER?

blessings