Which is not the point of my story at all except that every time I look at my beautiful daughter and her growing belly the refrain of that song keeps playing in my head " I'm just sitting here watching Scotty Grow". Except that by now i have changed it in my head to "Amanda grow."
Being the mother of a pregnant daughter is quite an experience. I have been completely fascinated by every moment of her pregnancy. I have worried when she has worried and worried when she has not worried, I have been delighted watching her growing belly. I have day dreamed about the baby and what she will look like ( yes I said she but give me a moment and I will say he) and what she will be accomplished at. I daydream about first steps, first words, first day of school. I also get to daydream about my role... I will be the cheerleader, the defender, the one who will always be in this child's corner. Some people call it spoiling...
Nonsense.
I just tell them it is in the grandma handbook. Trevor has heard about the grandma handbook... his soon to be bride, Laura, knows it exists and they also know I make it up as I go.
Amanda and Brian will know it soon enough.
I have had a fascination with being a grandma that I honestly did not have for being a mom. I have decided that it has to do with the fact that i never had one. My parents parents were dead long before I was born. I was always quite envious of those who did have them.
My cousins had their grandma Laura who always smelled of lilacs and carried a handkechief that had embroidery on it. She baked cookies, she sat in rocker and she was big and comforting looking. Her house looked and smelled unlike any other house. It looked like a gingerbread house and there were all sorts of interesting things in the house. She made beautiful blankets for babies. She was also an artist that was not as typical for the time but she did it.
There was my friend Lynn who had Grandma Deacy and Grandma O'Hearn. Two grandmas and one of them even lived with her for awhile! One of my favorite sayings came from Grandma Deacy " Poor excuse is better than none" Even at a young age I knew that she did not really mean that a poor excuse was a good thing..and that it would be a saying I would want to remember and use some day...and I have.
So I had some Grandma envy.
Which makes the whole thing so fun for me now.
Because this is the thing about the grandmother hand book you write it a little different for each child and their parent.
Blaze was my first grandchild. It was hard for me to know my place. That boy has had grandmas everywhere. Both his mom...Sheena ...my stepdaughter... and his dad had parents who had been divorced and remarried and they also had their parents parents around. Grandmas everywhere. So I waited to see how much help was needed...what my role was... I worried for awhile that he would feel that every woman who was older than his mom was his grandma. He seems to have been able to figure it out nicely. So I have watched him grow...delighted in him and in his wonderful mother. I have watched them both grow.
Then there was my Maggie...
whose very existence I am pretty sure I felt before either of her parents.
Again... I waited, where is my place... this is not my daughter, what does she want, what will her mom want, and what does my son i want.
It was a dicey situation that has turned out the very way I had prayed for it to over and over for the four of them.
My role,
I worry, i spoil ,I love, and I watch them grow.
So now we have Amanda in the countdown. She and Brian have decided not to find out the sex of the baby. Everyone says boy and I am fine with that but... I have had girl on the brain along with a birth date of July 15th.
I am not the grandma that I fantasied being.
I do not wear house dresses, although I do fancy dresses these days. My perfume is Euphoria... I don't knit..hell I don't even sew buttons and have been know to scotch tape my hems...I used to bake but not so much anymore...I am separated and gone back into the dating world.
In my daydreams I would not have been a match.com grandma.
But like the handbook itself ...Grandmas change.
What does not change is how much I look forward to this and all grandchildren.
I love this baby completely already.
My arms are ready to hold and rock. I can almost feel the child there already and smell that new baby smell.
I watch my beautiful girl grow, I rub her belly,and I talk to my newest grandchild and I say see you soon little one, Mema is waiting...waiting to watch you grow.
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