On Becoming a New Grandma

I have become a grandma of a newborn. It’s my first grandchild. When people ask how does it feel to become a grandma, I realize that I don’t really feel like a grandma, just that my daughter has given birth and is a mom. My daughter is a mom. I let that sink in – my first-born little girl is now a mom herself.

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When I go to see her, I am visited by images of my own grandmother coming to see us each week, getting off the Bliss Street subway station in Sunnyside with packages and hugs. She came every Sunday from Manhattan and cooked us interesting dinners and babysat my sister and I as we dressed up in teal-blue bedspreads and put on red lipstick and danced to the TV. I then think of my own mother who would come from Sunnyside to visit us on Long Island, taking the train and often babysitting for us, for a night out or when the kids were sick. I think on my mother-in-law who forged such a close relationship with my daughters, even after they moved to Florida. We would go down every school break in winter and stay with them; they would come up for the summers. My mother-in-law was a confidante to my daughters, filled with advice and fun ideas. 

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The fact that I am now a grandmother and my husband a new grandfather, makes me realize that we are now the top layer. We are the ones to offer up whatever it is they need - comfort, support, babysitting, stories of their infanthood and childhood, and, of course, tons of love.