Today I will be heading north to help with a vintage baby shower. It's for my niece, Autumn. She and her husband are going to be welcoming a daughter right before Christmas.
This makes me happy, but yet nostalgic.
And a bit melancholy.
And a bit excited.
Nostalgic, because I remember when Autumn was a little tiny baby herself, with her brown hair and pretty brown eyes, and I just can't believe she's going to be a mommy herself! It just doesn't seem possible!
Melancholy because I am old, and this proves it.
Excited for the new grandchild coming to my sister and her husband.
The page they are about to see turn.
The new chapter they are about to see written.
Grandparent-hood is grand.
And I am excited for my sister, because she's about to find out about one of the pure and unequaled pleasures in life.
Entering the realm of feeling so happy that you stuck it out, together, with your mate -- all for this: all that travel that was sometimes rough, all of it required make it to this wonderful place, the intersection of Happiness and Joy.
We can look backward and see the hard work.
We can look down the road and see the payoff.
That's why they call it grand.
The fun is just beginning.
All that hard work required to be a wife, a husband, and all that toil that is parenting boils down to this, PURE JOY.
The good stuff you harvest after keeping those vows, even when it was hard and life made absolutely NO sense.
For making it through those teenage years, when you wondered if it would do you in.
For the day-to-day-minutiae, wondering all the while if any of it really, truly mattered.
Arguing with yourself if it really counted or not, asking yourself if you were sane when you committed for life.
Turns out, that your babies bringing their babies home to you, to both of you, IS worth it all.
There's nothing like the joy of all discovering together all those unknown things about this beautiful new human: the tiny hands, tiny toes, a tiny mouth, and that tiny body--who she favors, how much of your own child you can see in this little one.
The trust.
The total dependency.
And the feeling of knowing that you all made it to this point together--to welcome a sparkling and new generation to your family--with LOVE.
