Babies

My older son and eldest offspring will be 59 in August.  We, the family are right now awaiting the arrival of a baby to his daughter predicted some time next week.  This child, said to be a boy, will join his cousin, the daughter of my son's son, born slightly over a year ago.  My son, the grandfather, and twice over!  Persons close to the family have brought up more than once their regret and imagine the regret of my late ex-wife, who never lived to experience becoming a great grandmother.  I have to chuckle a little bit, as I remember her on the telephone talking to our son when he called her with the news that his wife was expecting a baby.  Her mother-in-law complained somewhat bitterly into the phone to her son, that at 49 she was too young to be a grandmother.  I laughed to think that this woman whose mind was always trained on her architectural practice, on household management, "practical matters," as well as good martinis, could possibly care that she was to be labeled "granny" even before she turned fifty.  And granny was what they called her.  I always laughed to myself when I heard one of the grandchildren calling her that.  She never struck me as the grandmother type.  But then I was certainly not at all meant to be grampa.  She was the one who went to the stores and bought them all presents on all those appropriate occasions, and wrapped them up herself, too, concocting clever papers and ribbons.  She turned out to be in her very quiet and understated way a "doting"grandmother.  As she often said, in a favorite expression, "who woulda thunk it?"  I on the other hand was quite indifferent to the niceties and obligations of the position.  I did not even see my first born grandchild until she was two which actually scandalized all my friends.  Well, hell, the family lived in western Canada and my son had enough on his plate not to have to endure the complicated psychological upheaval that a visit from Dad would provoke. And Lord knows, the baby wouldn't care! She and her brother are grownups now and becoming parents, and we have a dynastic relationship, and quite a good time when we do get together, but I think they can take it or leave it alone.  I and my two daughters, the newly minted great-aunts, will be journeying up to Canada in August to see the new tyke in his bassinet.  How strange it all is, the visit will coincide with the new baby's grandfather's 59th birthday.  I remember the day he was born, moreover I remember the day we brought him home from the hospital, in a kind of stupor and terror.  Neither of us had ever baby sat and as we looked at this wee lump wrapped in his swaddling clothes and lying on the bathroom counter we trembled.  And thus began a life I never had imagined, a role of pater familias--insane, but wonderful, the greatest experience of my life.