It’s Ama. She’s going to be Ama. AH-ma. That’s what she’s decided—Jennifer, our daughter, whose son Jonathan is now a father. Perfect, I think.

So now am I GrandAHma? Wait, Great-grandAHma?

Or just Ma (pronounced Mah)? I’m definitely not Maw. Now that would be revolting.

Or could Solomon, the new baby, just say Grandmommy like all the others when his soft suckling mouth grows brave enough to try the word? Great-grandmommy, I think, would be taking things too far. It sounds overly greatly grand.




I’m all thumbs. Mere days after his birth, over at Jonathan and Hannah’s, carrying Solomon across their grassy, bumpy yard and trying not to fall and break him—Jonathan had handed him over when I got out of the car—I realized I might be stabbing his tender fetal-curled back (through his clothes) with my car keys. Another day, Hannah on our sofa, Paulson and Jonathan outside somewhere, and me prowling the house with Solomon, I let his head slightly wobble. Obviously I was focused and obsessing on my armful, so I can only guess, but I bet Hannah was watching with hawk eyes. I would watch with hawk eyes. Also I said dumb things to him, probably overwhelming his nerves. Also I’m sure I didn’t smell right, like milk and damp warm mama clothes. Also I left him open to the air, didn’t swaddle him in the crepey cotton cloth like Hannah does, and the jostling I tried maybe rattled instead of calmed him. The worst thing was the tea. I had my mug, boiling hot, by my stuffed chair, and I’d laid Solomon alongside me, safely sandwiched between my leg and the chair arm, and whenever I wanted another swallow I held the mug out over the carpet, far away, and leaned way far out to sip, and I wasn’t going to scald Solomon, no, but anything could’ve happened, anything can always happen, and there for a couple moments Hannah couldn’t even breathe. Or that’s what I’m guessing, anyway.

Had anybody recorded his baby noises? I wondered, before Jonathan and Hannah left. They said no. But baby noises don’t last! I had to go for my phone.

 





After Solomon’s birth, I wanted to say something here. I attempted some lines. I scribbled and scribbled (you would not believe how much I scribble). I thought I should hold off posting, though, until Jennifer got around to telling the world. I couldn’t be stealing her thunder.

Finally she posted.

What in the world.

It’s a strange thing, her post began, becoming a grandmother. Unlike becoming a parent, it’s not something I choose—it happens to me.

Up until now, the show has been mine. I have been the one raising children, making decisions and life changes and a home. I ruled.

Ha. Guess who else used to rule.

But with this new baby, I will no longer be center stage. Soon, the moon and stars will revolve around the grandbaby’s family, and I will be bumped to an outer orbit—revolving, watching, illuminating.

Ho, ho, ho.

Not long after, on the phone with Jennifer, I read to her my own incoherent, starting-out sentences for that post of mine, now aborted. I have them here with me, scratched across a ripped-out notebook page, brainstorm style.

It’s not about you. Me, I meant.

You’ve retreated slid mutely quietly to the outer ring outermost orbit of the pantheon. I’ve, I meant. Me, the old great-grandmother. This is only right.

“You wrote that?” asked Jennifer. “What? You wrote that before you saw my post?”

Before Solomon’s arrival she’d worried she might not get all the baby time she wanted, but now Hannah and Jonathan were calling on her freely, eager for her help. Well of course. They were spinning with fatigue. “You can be a very busy planet,” I told her, right before we hung up. We laughed and laughed.




Here are pictures from that day I could’ve gouged our soft, mewling 4-day-old in the back:

 
 

My worn-down hands, gone gnarly from living. But that Titan father with tree-trunk arms (the Milky Way mother is on the porch steps, photographing). See him? Noble and strong, stayed in his orbit, bound tidally, Titan will catch child and woman if she, in a twinkling, plummets to the ground like a meteorite.

At least catch the child.

Old woman, even if she’s all thumbs, can still drift in her circling path, still ruled by love’s laws.

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