You Can Call Me "Gramps"

This is going to be something of a whiplash for people who read my Saturday's post; you can imagine how it is for us over here.  Just three hours ago, my daughter gave birth to her son Julian, 7 lbs., after 16+ hours of labour.

I had no knowledge of this until getting a call at 2 a.m. this morning that my daughter's water had broken and that she was being admitted into the hospital, having started contractions.  It was a very long time for her; I'm tempted to make jokes about people in my family being willing to work hard, but I'd rather she hadn't had to go through it.  Her mother gave her birth in just 20 minutes.

So, all is set to right here.  Strange that the dates I gave with the last post, the 25th through the 27th of September, which each saw a birth or a death, now have one more day, the 28th, with another birth.  Strange that my grandson was born two days in the calendar after my daughter, and very strange that it happened three days after my father's passing.

Me, I'm happy to be a grandfather.  I can't imagine why anyone would resent getting old, when this is one of the perks.  I'm quite happy to go through childhood if it means another opportunity to help bring up a child who wasn't formerly fucked up by someone else.  I have no worries at all about what they'll do or want or think ... Julian will grow up in a far-reaching, intelligent, book-read house, with flexible, wise and serious parents, without the nonsense of being told to do something "because" someone said so.  Whatever Julian decides to do with his life, it won't be founded in pretense or cruelty, because he'll see none of that until the time comes for him to go to school.  He won't need a safe space there.  He have safe spaces aplenty at home, with people who will listen and believe what he has to say.

My daughter's joking concern, it being the hardest choice she can imagine, is that he'll want to go to New York and be a dancerl, ala Cats or Moulin Rouge.  Neither she, nor her husband, nor I, nor my partner, have any trouble with that; but some of us know what a cruel, cutthroat, vicious world that can be.  Heaven help anyone who goes that route.  But, if that should happen, or anything else, I'll be interested, I'll give what advice I can from some of my own experiences, and I'll buy the boy a switchblade if he needs one.

Hmph.  You think I'm joking.

There's no telling what will really happen.  Or if he'll stumble across this post seven or eight years from now (we have to think about these things now).  What matters is how absurd it is that we fall in love with babies from the instant they are born, because we know they'll never be a stranger -- not unless we foolishly set out to make them one.