Love That Baby...

Why do grannies love grandbabies? Well, of course “grandchild” is the very essence of love. It’s Grand! Sometimes it’s even Great and Grand. The love is grand, but it isn’t the “grind” of daily life that parents have to deal with, the getting up in the middle of the night, the suffering through teething and illness and having to correct bad habits or prevent them in the first place… 

By the same token, grandparents often miss the milestones, the first steps, the first words, the first potty victory. Grandparents get to enjoy over the telephone these things, and can rejoice with their children and remember… twenty or thirty years ago when the baby’s mom or dad did those things for the first time.

Generation to generation, life goes on. Sometimes we get old enough to enjoy children down to the third or fourth generation. I have great grandchildren. I never thought I would be in this position. Where did the years go?

Today, I’m in Portland, Oregon enjoying Martyn Lyle Loehrke, my youngest grandson. He is a happy baby, wide-eyed innocence, checking out the world with his mouth, and expressing joy with flailing hands and kicking feet. He is learning every waking second, reaching out for the world with his whole body. He rewards most all eye contact with huge smiles and even giggles sometimes. He is a real people person, looking around for eyes, fixing on faces, and clearly recognizing familiar ones while rejecting none, not even the dog…

Today I get to see how he will be in a crowd. Everyone is coming to my two daughters’ birthday party today. There will be a crowd of people here at Beth’s home in Portland, Oregon. They’ll be celebrating Beth’s twenty-ninth and Rachel’s forty-second birthdays. My guess is Martyn will enjoy the people and the attention. And then he will be done, and just go to sleep, and sleep soundly without being disturbed by the noise and laughter. What a good baby! (Of course, that’s Grannie talking.)

While I’m enjoying the grandchild, I’m also watching my child, my youngest, my Baby, Bethany Joy. She came along rather late in my child-bearing years. She is thirteen years younger than Rachel, and six years younger than Jon. I was thirty-seven and her dad, Dave Goins, was forty-six when she was born. At first I was a bit apprehensive about raising another child; I felt “too old” and remembered how Mama had expressed those feelings at forty-two when she had my baby sister, Diane. I had always had difficult first halves of pregnancies, and that was so with that last pregnancy.

When Beth was ready to be born, we hadn’t decided on a name for her. We had Biblical names for the others long before they were born, but we couldn’t think of a name for a girl. The Bible is short on female names. Finally Rachel came up with the name Bethany, which is not a person in the Bible but a place. I liked it. Dave agreed. I added Joy because though that pregnancy had not brought me a lot of joy, I hoped the child would. And she has.

And Bethany Joy is now taking great joy in her little boy. And so am I.