I remember sitting at the dinner table when my son and daughter-in-law unexpectedly handed me a palm-sized, gift-wrapped box. Inside was a tiny pair of yellow crochet booties. Certainly a cliché way to tell your parents there's a new generation growing inside this beautiful young woman you welcomed to your family just over a year ago. Cliché or no, we were over the moon with excitement and anticipation. I shouted; I cried; I was so happy at the thought of my son becoming a daddy. I couldn't wait to meet this tiny person and add a new name to our family tree. But I had underestimated myself. Little did I know that in less than 40 weeks I would be introduced to the greatest love of my life. Meeting Isaac, on a hot day in Texas, after being picked up from the Dallas airport, was both uneventful and cataclysmic at the same time. This newly born baby boy simply latched onto my finger, but in doing so he had latched onto my heart and neither of us would ever let go.
Becoming a MiMi or a MiMaw; a Grandma or a GiGi; a Nana or an Oma, or whatever name your favorite people call you, is life changing. You've experienced the joy, the heartache, and the exhaustion of being a mom for two decades or more. The early morning feedings, the diaper changes, the potty training, the sometimes joy of firsts: first steps, first words, first day of school, first love and first heartache, first time behind the wheel, first ticket, first fender-bender. You've been there to listen, to guide, to console. You've slept little and worried much. You've been on top of the world with your child and also in the depths of despair. Their happy, was your happy. Their sorrow was yours as well. You were patient till you weren't. When they left the nest, you wept, sat on their bed, and missed them terribly. Yet there were moments too when, deep inside you, a voice whispered softly till it rose to full crescendo, like the Braveheart William Wallace's declaration, "Freeeedom!!!" But no - we will never admit that to our children!
How we get to MiMihood is different for everyone. Sometimes it follows the traditional pattern of our child stepping into college, then marriage, then baby. Sometimes it's a teenage accident. Sometimes it's years of waiting, accompanied by doctors’ appointments, testing, and lots of money. Sometimes it's a gift through adoption or foster care. Sometimes it's not even our child's child, but that little someone whose life intersects unexpectedly with our own, needing the love of a MiMi, and so we become theirs. However you arrived, one thing's for certain, there's no going back.
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