"Hi, Grandma. Merry Christmas!"
"Jason!" We hugged and kissed sincerely clinging to this rewarding moment.
"My word! I must be shrinking or you're still growing." I pushed him to arms length and looked him up and down." You'll have your dad beat if you keep stretching. How was your first college semester?"
"Two B's and two C's. But I could have done better in Math," he said apologetically.
"I won't complain if you never do worse. Where are the others?"
"They're bringing in the baggage. I'd better get mine." He hurried back to the elevator.
Busy and noisy as the next hours were with visiting, getting dinner ob the table and everyone assigned to quarters, I couldn't keep my eyes and thoughts off this budding young man who was my first grandchild. A melancholy and aloofness about him bothered me. He seemed a world apart shielded by videos and T.V. programs at which he stared blankly.
My mind floated back to the late November day when the phone rand insistently.
"Hello," I answered without emotion.
"Mom, Karen had her baby last night-- a boy--ten pounds and twenty two inches!" my son blurted out.
"Congratulations! Now we can boast of a grandson. How's Karen?"
"She's fine. But Mom, she's going to need some help. Could you come up and stay with us for few days after she comes home with the baby?"
"Why, Bill, Karen didn't ask me. I'm sure she wants her mother at a time like this. She lives close by. Didn't she offer?"
"No, and Mom, Karen wants you. I know she does. She was just hesitant to ask. Besides, Her mother has six kids. She won't be thrilled like you."
"Well, if you're sure you both want me."
"I'm sure. Can you make it in three days? That's when Karen leaves the hospital."
"I'll be there."
And I was there waiting impatiently in the tiny spruced up apartment with dinner in the works when a pounding of the door knocker signaled arrival of the new family. I kissed my smiling daughter-in-law as she handed me the precious bundle of humanity.
"I'm so glad you came," she said sincerely.
From then on that baby of mine-- at least for a whole week. I changed him without reluctance. I relished his bath time when I turned up the heat, stripped him naked and gently immersed him in the oval bath pan. With ever-so-soft cloth, I washed his tiny body from head to toe, wrapped him in a warmed receiving blanket, laid him on the bath table and rubbed his smooth skin with baby oil. Nothing ever smelled nor looked sweeter than my freshly bathed and dressed grandson. For his feedings I had to turn him over briefly to his mother. My equipment wasn't regulated for that function.
The ultimate joy came n the wee hours of the morning when he awoke for his first feeding. His mother answered his cry and accommodated his needs, then brought him to me. Without a blanket to bind him I stretched the twenty two inches of him flat on top of me, his face and head nestled on one shoulder. As soon as I hummed one verse of a lullaby he was fast asleep. His even breathing and rhythmic heart beat made notes sweeter than an antique music box topped by a languishing cherub. In Miltom's words, I was "throned on highest bliss".
That was nineteen years ago. Not all the intervening years have been blissful. A bitter divorce separated Jason's family. He had new step parents to deal with. Was this still causing his pensiveness?
"Before bedtime Jason asked to use the phone.
"Go ahead," I encouraged, thinking he probably wanted to report their safe arrival to his mother.
"Keep it short. It's long distance." I heard his step mother whisper. Twenty minutes later she called to him a reminder that his time was up. Hmm, I thought. That wasn't his mother.
The next morning I walked into the master bedroom to find Jason again on the phone. He looked rather sheepish.
"Long distance again and in the middle of a week day?" I asked and immediately hated myself for my sarcastic insert.
"I'm getting off now. I just needed to know where my girl would be going to college next year. She hadn't heard when I left."
Ah! So that was it. Puppy love. Well I couldn't object. With a natural sequence of events he would be entitled to puppy love, passionate love, abiding love, enduring love, the love of children and family. I fervently hoped he would develop the self love that makes it all possible.
