Mo-mo Mariah

My granddaughter Mariah (DGD) was here for a few hours this evening.  We have our usual routine, I change her out of clothes she comes in and into something I think would be better, we trim and paint her fingernails and toenails, I let her raid my fridge and eat all the fruit in sight, we put on a movie, eat popcorn, and then she retires to her corner of toys.  

Today, we washed "Shiney," her precious stuffed dog who has some serious miles on him, and she left him here with her Beanie cat collection.  Today is pick-up day for her to return to her mom, and mom and dad share custody and she has a back and forth life.  Precious toys get left behind when life is transient and she has learned that her prized possessions will be waiting for her at grandma's house if she leaves them there.  Shiney is a constant for her, but she left him here tonight as a kind of breadcrumb back to grandma's house for her next visit.  

I saw a billboard at a bus stop when I was living in Seattle in 1979 and it said, "Grandparents and Grandchildren Dream About Each Other."  I never realized what that meant until I became grandma in 2003 because I never dreamed about my grandmother.  She used to drown kittens right after they were born because they were too much of a burden to her and to the mother cat, and later I learned that kind of cruelty was only the outward manifestation of 95 years of hard living.   

Mariah changed all of that way of thinking for me, and we have a special relationship that started the minute she was born.  The picture I have on my dresser is of a woman with tired eyes from a waiting vigil for a long night's labor holding a newly born, newly swaddled baby, and as the woman with tired eyes looks at the camera, the tiny 1/2 hour old newborn is smiling up at the woman. The tired woman?  Me.  The newborn?  Mariah.  It was pure magic, and being tired didn't matter.  For the uninitiated, newborns don't smile.   They are a tired tangle of stress and perplexed energy, and they don't smile.  This one did.  

If I never have any other grandchildren,  I would be happy with just this one.  I know Paul will probably fall on top of a girl at some point and have another kid, Jill and Matt say no, they don't see kids fitting in to their lives, and Katie and Jason have nixed the idea, although I think both Katie and Jill  would be fun moms to have.  But then again, they learned from the best. 

Grandma.