When they placed you in my arms...

My cousin, Eva, is counting down the days until she becomes a grandmother.

There are many things I want to tell her about my own experience.

After all, this is the person who taught me the words to a goodly number of Beatles songs. She taught me to make gum paper wrapper chains and that eating lime sherbet while watching "Dark Shadows" made the whole experience less scary.



She is my lifelong pen pal. I wore her hand me downs and followed her lead.

Grandmother hood is one of the few things I actually experienced first.



So here is the problem. I can't teach or explain this.

This cousin of mine is a teacher by profession and I expect a very excellent one. I love the written and spoken word, yet I am without words to describe this particular things.

My first and only grandbaby is seven now but I recall very vividly the first time I heard her cry. I recall the first time I held her in my arms.  It was just like a quote I've often seen Pinned and RePinned on Pinterest. She slipped into my heart, in fact, in ways I cannot describe.

Her other grandmother, whose own first grandchild was eight at the time, told me that "something happened" in her heart the first time she saw her grandbaby's face. At the time of the telling, just weeks before I experienced exactly that, I could not get my mind wrapped around grandmotherhood being a whole different experience than anything I had felt before. It is. I just can't describe it.

What I can tell my cousin, is that having a grandbaby is one of the few things in my life that has lived up to the hype. It's every bit as wonderful as I was told it would be; maybe more so.

I can also tell her that it just keeps getting better. At least for me, the new has never worn off. My heart (and sometimes my eyes) still well up at the sight of her. I find myself staring at her as she sleeps when she spends the night at our house. Just the thought of her floods my mind with joy.

That's the best I can do to describe what is about to happen to this cousin of mine.

I am hoping she will suceed where I have not and that she will be able to tell me all about it.



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