Grooving on Grannyhood

I waited outside the glass doors that separated "Labor and Delivery" from the operating room, knowing my daughter was on the operating table, and that her husband, clad in white paper scrubs, booties, cap and mask was by her side. I paced. Was that, finally, the unmistakable cry of a newborn? Did Katherine call out, "Is that my baby?"

Then, there was Ty as they rolled out the newest littlest being. Elation lit up his face like a torch. The glass doors opened, a nurse was reaching into the incubator and picking up a little swaddled bundle of baby boy and asking, "Is this the Grandmother?" Ty said yes and she handed him to me. The moment has gone. The feelings are stitched into my heart, that sort of love that is forever, an echo of holding my own newborn children, giddy and tremulous and grateful and delighted and delirious with joy. Someone took a picture. When I looked later it was all face, wet-eyed, stoned with happiness. The baby wore a tiny knitted blue cap.

I followed behind the rolling caravan of nurse and Daddy and baby boy. Ty stopped and pushed the button that caused "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to issue forth from invisible speakers, announcing the latest new birth. In the hallway outside the nursery, we ran smack into Katie and Jane, who are two of the Aunties, and the baby's 9 year-old cousin Isabelle. We wept and hugged and bounced and cheered and gazed through the nursery window at Ty as he gazed at his son, squiggling around and howling as the nurse examined him. 

Then Katherine was in recovery, numb-legged and groggy, happier then I've ever seen her, and she and Ty stared at each other in another one of those fat moments where words are unnecessary and they said his name: Anthony Fowler Cirelli, III. "He'll be called Tripp," Katherine said. "With two ps."

Welcome little one. You are perfect.