Grandma's Love

When my daughter was first married, she and her husband mentioned to me that they didn't think they wanted children.  A scant two weeks later, they sat in my living room and told me they were expecting!  They were married in June of 2000.  The baby was born in August of 2002, but it all seemed to happen so fast.

I am not one to take to change easily.  I need time to adjust to new realities.  My first response to the idea of being a grandmother was something like Frank Barone's iconic response to things in the TV series Everybody Loves Raymond:  Holy crap!  My mind started to spin, and before Nate and Meg left my house that day, I had already shifted gears.

The kids lived on a golf course where Nathan was the course superintendent.  Megan worked part time at the club house.  We started planning a nursery.  Over time, I supplied Megan's old crib (which my mom and dad had bought for her).  I bought 250 cloth diapers because that's what Meg wanted for her baby.  They obtained a glider/rocker with a footstool for the room...and a changing table.  We sewed curtains.  I borrowed a bassinette for the early months...and so it went.  When the time came, we were ready!

Robin Michelle was born without drugs or incident just after midnight on August 6, 2002.  My mother's birth date!  Mom passed in 1986, but I was convinced that Robin's birth was Mom's way of being involved--especially since Mom's first grandchild was also born on that date!  I did my best to support my daughter in her first few days as a mother.  I think she was convinced that she couldn't handle the responsibility, and I knew she could.  She breastfed little Robin who grew like a weed and eventually became such a delightful child that I loved taking her out in public.  She charmed everyone who saw her in restaurants, and she was my very own special child.  We became best buds!

Six months later, Meg and Nate announced that they were expecting again!  Thus, we needed another bedroom.  A back room at the golf course house was cleaned up and redecorated to become Robin's room, and we re-did the original nursery for the male child that was coming.  With both pregnancies, Megan was induced because she was ready to deliver but contractions just weren't happening the way the doctor wanted it.  Before too long, Megan requested an epidural because, as she said to me, almost apologetically, "This time is different, Mom.  More pain."  Nathan and I were requested to go away for 45 minutes or so.  We drove down to Wendy's to get something to eat, thinking we would come back to a more comfortable Megan.  What we came back to were nurses scurrying around, with one of them in tears, and the doctor called for an immediate delivery.  What was "different" about this time was that the nurse had accidentally "spiked" the Pitocin (the inducement drug) directly into Meg's IV rather than into the pump that measured the dosage slowly.  In short, she was in one long, strong contraction that wouldn't give up.  We were told later that had they not discovered it, her uterus could have ruptured, endangering her life and her baby's.  Mere minutes after Nate and I got back, Ryan Eugene Heffelman was born healthy.

Robin had been born a brunette, while Ryan was a blondie.  He came out of the hopper looking for all the world like his great-grandfather Tague on his father's side.  While Meg was in the hospital, Grandma Judy and I did tag-team grandparenting to take care of Robin who was obviously confused by all the fuss.  (She was only 15 months old at the time.)   It took a few months for Ryan to outgrow his birth looks, but he became the cutest little bug the planet ever knew!  Robin and Ryan became absolutely the loves of my life.  He, with his sense of humor and huge vocabulary, and she with her silent charm and talent.  I told my daughter often that she used to be the love of my life, but that my grandchildren had usurped her position.  OMG, there was nothing I couldn't/wouldn't do for those babies!

In the meantime, Meg and Nathan divorced, and my grandchildren aren't babies anymore.  Both tower over me.  Both are teenagers who probably consider me the most boring person on the planet, but I still live for them.  I adore them.  I adore my daughter, as well.  They all live 2,000 miles away from me now, which kills me, but I endure through the wonders of the Internet where I can have daily online conversations with my kid and sometimes my grandkids.

I try not to borrow trouble.  Honestly, I do.  Tonight, my grandchildren will be flying to Chicago to visit their father for a month.  Toward the end of the month, they will be here in Plainfield, IN, with their Heffelman grandparents and me. There is a part of my brain that says they'll be okay, but another part that worries about them flying alone.  Those thoughts lead me to the conclusion that if anything happened to my babies, I would not survive.  Seriously.  I could not endure life without Megan or Robin or Ryan.  They are my reasons for living.  And God forbid that anything should happen to Meg's husband, Denis.  What would I do?  How could I exist?

Please God, protect my family.  May I go before they do!  I'm being selfish here.  I doubt I could endure any other way!