First Impressions

On Sunday evening, April 28, 2019, around 5:30pm, Ken and I became grandparents! Our firstborn, Rolin, and his wife Joy became parents of their firstborn when Seth Rowan – all 8 pounds, 8 ounces of him – arrived. What a terrific moment that was, to hear the news that it is now official: I am a grandma!!

Grandma Danette. I have a new name now, but I really don’t feel a lot different than I did before. I believe I will change though, as this grandmothering role grows on me. Already, my heart is expanding in this first week of my grandbaby’s life. Somehow, the love just opens up to include this little newcomer.

Upon becoming a grandma, here are some of my first impressions:

1      

S    Sharing the excitement with others multiplies the delight. All of the Kenites (except Rolin and Joy, of course) were here at our house when we got the news of Seth’s birth. We had gathered for supper and the evening to celebrate Ricky’s golden birthday, so we were conveniently together to speculate IF Joy was indeed in labor, WHEN we would get the baby news via phone call, and WHAT sort of name Rolin and Joy might have chosen to name the boy or girl. We were together to huddle around the phone when the call did come, to ask for details, to exclaim, to congratulate, to hug all the new-titled people, to be almost giddy with the sheer rapture of it all. And then, as the news rippled out in ever-widening circles to reach relatives, church family, and friends, the delight kept multiplying. I had not known that so many would “rejoice with those that do rejoice” in this way. Most astonishing for me were the people who entered into our joy while they themselves have not yet, and most likely never will, experienced what we have received – the gift of children and grandchildren.

2       What that one phone call did to my perception of our grandchild. The Wee One, as we had dubbed the baby before “it” arrived, suddenly was more than a coming mystery. This little person’s gender was finally known (Rolin and Joy knew before he was born, but they chose not to tell anyone else, and they guarded their secret well even though we kept hoping they’d slip up) and he had a name, a birthdate and time, a weight and a length. Then we got our first picture of him on our phones, and there he was with his chubby cheeks and dear little chin and Oh, this is getting “realer” every minute, I thought, Seth Rowan is a little person that I can get to know. It was as though one birth announcement exploded vague into definite like a shower of colorful fireworks.

3      Newborn nuances. I’ve forgotten an astonishing amount of things about newborns in the years since our children were babies, but a number of the details have come rushing back to me in the times that I have held Seth.  His skin is delicate and silky soft. His mouth is a tiny, graceful carving. He can draw it in tightly or open it wide in yawning hunger. With it, he can do dozens of different expressions, including pleasant smiles and painful grimaces. Sometimes, in his sleep, he makes a sucking motion wherein his bottom lip goes in and out in the most comical fashion. He stretches so much. He hiccups, “schnippses”, and “grexxes”. (PA Dutch terms, probably the kind for which you just have to go by context and guess the meaning of because “there really are no English words that mean exactly the same thing”) And he has that certain baby fragrance, smelling at the same time both earthy and heaven-y.

4      Gazing into the face of a newborn does something to one’s soul. I cradle Seth and my thoughts eddy…marvelous creatorship of God in the designing of this child…I love seeing his parents with him…he is so wanted – how come he gets to be surrounded by so much love and there are other babies in the world who don’t…as his grandma, I will be able to influence him, potentially in positive ways and in negative ways…pray God, let it be for good…in the presence of such innocence, vulnerability and dependence, time slows…I feel suspended between the seen and unseen...

      Could this be wonder?

 This Post’s Quotable:

At twilight one evening, Kerra looked out our front door and saw a rabbit in the yard. She informed us of her sighting, and then added, “Must be a dusk bunny.”

This Post’s Childhood Memory:

We children had many happy times playing on our swing set at the Northwoods Beach place. Its metal tubing frame was shaped like a big capital A on each end. The poles that made the “legs” of the A’s, where they met the ground, were not cemented in as they should have been for stability’s sake. This meant that vigorous pumping of the swings could make the poles actually lift off the ground and then set back down, rocking the set considerably. We called this “making it thump”. For me, this type of swinging was as frightening as it was thrilling.