Ever since we found out about our second grandchild on Christmas Eve, our eyes have been focused on July (or August!). For months now, every conversation about summer plans has begun with “Well, it depends on Baby K…” We know the baby window is a wide one, but we are now two weeks from the due date, so I’m keeping my bag half-packed these days. My phone, usually silenced at night, has the volume turned up all the time now. And "casual" daily check-ins with my daughter have begun.
As we wait, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking forward to all that lies ahead: Holding sweet Baby K for the first time, watching my daughter and son-in-law as parents, happily taking day shifts and night shifts so Mom and Dad can get some rest… But I’ve also been looking back. It started with digging out my old journals to read the birth stories of each of my own kids. Then when I got to the journal from 1992, the year my daughter was born, I got lost in reading other entries, little snippets of our life back then. Those verbal snapshots gave me glimpses of our family that I’d nearly forgotten about.
Time is such a fluid thing. We’ve lived a whole life since I wrote those entries. Yet, sometimes, my days as a young mom seem like yesterday. I feel like if I can just look over my shoulder quickly enough, there we’ll all be—just as we were thirty years ago. I loved those days. But I also love these days.
Our first grandchild, Jack, is nearing his first birthday, and what a happy, breathtaking year it’s been for my son and daughter-in-law (and for us!). Recently, I sent my daughter-in-law this text: “Good job, Mama. Your instincts were spot on.” She replied, “Aw thanks! I try but I don’t know what I’m doing.” I was struck by how true that is—in parenting and in life. We trust our instincts, try our hardest, but so much of the time we feel like we don’t know what we’re doing.
Yesterday, my daughter and I spent the day hemming curtains for Baby K’s nursery. It involved a lot of measuring, marking, pinning, cutting, ironing, and finally sewing. We were as careful as could be, and the curtains look beautiful, but they are not perfect. At one point, early in the process, I said to her, “I wish there was one thing in my life where I could say, “Oh, this. I know exactly what to do.” There are probably some people with more expertise and more confidence who feel this way about things, but most of us just go along, doing the best we can and learning as we go.
In the middle grade novel The Watsons Go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis, there’s a part I love where the main character, ten-year-old Kenny says, “Dad? I don’t think I’ll ever know what to do when I’m grown-up. It seems like you and Momma know a lot of things that I can never learn. It seems real scary. I don’t think I could ever be as good a parent as you guys.” His dad replies, “You’ll learn from the mistakes your mother and I make, just like we learned from the mistakes our parents made. I don’t have a single doubt that you and Byron and Joey will be much better parents than your mother and I ever were…”
I think this is true: each generation learns from the mistakes of the previous one. That doesn’t stop us from making our own mistakes along the way, but from what I’ve seen of this current generation of young adults and young parents, the future is in good hands. Thirty years from now when our kids’ kids are having kids, I hope and believe the world will be a cleaner, greener, safer, kinder place.
But for now, for us, the countdown is on. See you soon, Baby K. We can't wait to meet you!
