IT was love at first sight. As soon as I set my eyes on him, no one else mattered inside the room. I stood there on one sweet Thursday, cradling my grandson—a newborn weighing seven pound, five ounces, only 26 hours and eight minutes old. Wrapped so tightly in my arms, nothing else in this world could get at him. How I prayed he could stay protected that way.
And I thought I had forgotten how to hold a baby, but my arms remember. Gazing into that sweet innocent face, just above the size of a hug, grasping tiny soft hands so small and warm, like a kitten in the shelter of your clasp. Those gasps of astonishments, sighs of delight lost long time ago—when the four girls grew wise and worldly—are suddenly back to you, by a grandchild, in what seems to be the same small hands that clutched you, dragging you, from one excitement to another.
Rocking this tiny bundle of joy, who is a loving extension of you, is a midlife ecstasy. Just like that blush inducing love affair, now, this other man in your life has just made you realize, all that joy of becoming a mother was simply a prelude to the elation of being a grandmother.
In the last four years, this pint size bolt of lightning, with such shining eyes and smooth skin, had me wrapped around his fingers. He is heaven sent, a bewitching creature sprinkled with stardust and bathed in moon glow. He is purity in dirty sneakers, chivalry on a carousel house, a quick study in perpetual motion. A magnificent little tyrant I call Hachikababa, the captor who holds the key to my aging heart.
As he grew older, I took him for strolls, watched him stop to talk to a dog or cat, look at butterflies or listen to the birds that sing from the trees lining Rexford Drive. He started asking questions that defied logic or whose answer required another question.
When I am away, his mother let him breathe on the phone, and in totally unexpected language, he is able to say he loves me. He was amusing whether two or three days old. He had the power to raise my spirits when it was low, expand my universe, in the twinkle of an eye. Where there is love, he was usually nearby.
As the summer wound down and more frequent quarrels erupted between him and his siblings, I was looking forward to the day I would walk him up on his first day to school.
Because he is the youngest grandson, I had learned a few things by the time he came along. I found out that the seemingly endless days of babyhood are gone like lightning. I blinked and one had done college, the other grand children were setting off for school, as he eagerly did, this morning.
Today, he had no idea how I was feeling. He was so excited. Last night, he had packed and unpacked markers, safety scissors, pencils and erasers into a Transformers backpack a dozen times. I am no Maria Montessori, but I’ll miss our lazy mornings, when he learned numbers by helping me count soda cans we got from the market. He caught on the nuances of language, when he asked me why I always called him darling when he was helping with the chores and Hachikababa when we’re reading stories — my explanation between a cuddly mood and a matey, seemed to satisfy him.
Together, we will learn names of plants, every tree, every bird, insect and oddities. We will draw cats and dogs, father and mothers and flowers. His acts of kindness and the makings of a little gentleman will be what my own mother taught me, in a relationship between one heart and another—love that flowers through connected spirits.
He gave me one of his characteristically fierce tight hugs. This time he was ready to let go before I was. Maybe someday he will deliver a kindergartener with his or her own chinky set of eyes and sudden grin to that first day of school. When he turns at the door to wave goodbye, he or she will be too deep in conversation with a new friend to notice. Even as he smiles, he will feel something warm on his cheeks.
And then he will know.
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E-mail Mylah at [email protected]
