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Pink
Stuff at Last
By Susan Law Corpany
I can still picture the scene in my
mind. My mother had just brought home her fifth baby from the hospital,
my fourth brother. All the family was gathered around the bed to
welcome little Mike, except me. Seven-year-old Susan was in the
corner crying because he wasn’t the sister she’d begged
for.
I did my best to understand when my
mother told me that she had tried her best to get me a sister, but
that it wasn’t up to her. She also told me that she didn’t
think she was going to have any more babies, and told me that someday
I would grow up and maybe I would have a little girl.
Eventually I grew up, got married,
and had a baby boy. That was good, I told myself, to have a boy
first because everyone needs a big brother to look up to, but I
lost my husband in an accident before the baby was a year old, and
consequently Scott is the only child to whom I gave birth. At 52,
it is safe to say that is not going to change.
Seven years ago, I was blessed with
a stepdaughter, Becky. We connected immediately because she also
grew up with four brothers, now my stepsons. Once again I find myself
living in the House of Testosterone.
One year for Mother’s Day I was
given two “chick flicks” from my stepsons — Crocodile
Dundee and Throw Momma from the Train. One of the
boys said once, “The nicest thing I can say about my sister
is that she is an honorary boy.” I knew exactly what he meant.
Although my mother had made sure I
had dolls and girl toys, I had often been along for the ride with
the boys, climbing trees, running paper routes and camping out in
the backyard. I watched "Rawhide" along with my brothers,
although I was likely the only one with a crush on Clint Eastwood’s
character “Rowdy.” I remember the year we got a box
of chocolates at Christmas addressed to “Dean, Ruth and the
boys.” It was from our next-door-neighbors.
I love Becky dearly, but she was just
home from a mission when I met her, and she was too old for me to
buy her little frilly dresses or put her hair into a whale spout
with a little pink bow attached. I dreamed one day of little granddaughters.
Then it hit me that the trend toward males might continue. I imagined
my home overrun by active little grandsons. They would organize
themselves into SWAT teams. “You guys break the knickknacks.
We’ll take food out of the fridge and hide it somewhere she
won’t find it until it starts to stink. You guys go jam paper
towels down the toilet.”
I imagined them laying waste to the
Thanksgiving turkey like a swarm of locusts on a field of Mormon
wheat. It wasn’t a pretty picture.
Granddaughters
I have been in Utah for a month, waiting
for Becky to have a baby and being here to help her once she did.
I knew this was another little granddaughter, and I arrived with
one bag full of baby stuff, anxious to make her acquaintance, although
not nearly as anxious as Becky.
My beautiful daughter-in-law Lucy gave
me my first sweet little granddaughter nearly two years ago. My
husband made jokes about second mortgages and Becky joked about
making a video called “Grandmas Gone Wild” as I shopped
for pink stuff for the first time in my life. My sewing machine
has magically sprung back to life, and the nightgown and baby doll
wearing a matching nightgown that were supposed to be for Christmas
somehow ended up in my suitcase for little Lucy, so she would know
that grandma had not forgotten her. Especially because that one
evening before Becky had her baby, I was babysitting Lucy and she
was not obeying “gamma.” I told her if she wasn’t
good I would go to the hospital and get a new grandbaby. (Now she
knows Grandma does not make idle threats.)
True to Grandma's word, baby Lucy (shown here) was replaced by a
newer model granddaughter, who will doubtless also receive matching
pink nightgowns for her and her dolls.
Becky gave birth on November 9 to Elizabeth
Ann and had honored me with an invitation to be there when the baby
was born and to hang around for a while afterwards and help her
adjust to motherhood. I watched the birth, and I now have renewed
respect for all women who have participated in this miracle multiple
times, or even just once. (We “one-timers” deserve some
respect, too.) “Ellie” is a sweet good-natured baby,
and I feel like I am living in the bonus round.
Ellie, in the arms of her mother Becky. Grandma shares
the love, but she didn't share the labor pains.
It starts with something called labor,
which is appropriate, because when you are a mother, the labor never
ends. I see the weariness in Becky as she struggles by on the minimal
sleep that is allotted to new mothers.
I also see two new parents who cannot
take their eyes off their tiny daughter. I saw Josh’s eyes
light up when they handed Ellie to him for the first time in the
hospital. I watched as Becky first laid eyes on the finished product,
and I see the depth of her love for her little one. I heard little
Ellie’s first cries and watched her first bath. I helped give
her the second one, gently combing her soft baby hair and inhaling
the new baby smell, which, sorry guys, beats new car smell hands
down. As I fly home today, I know I will soon experience grandmotherly
withdrawal pains. Someone needs to bottle “new baby smell”
to help ward off this problem.
Once Removed
Being a grandmother is like watching
the labor pains on the monitor after you have had the epidural.
The pain exists but you are removed from it a step. You can hand
her over to her parents when she is being difficult. You can sleep
through the night when she is a week old. You can sleep through
the night when she is seventeen years old and late getting home
from a date. You will join in with the prayers and the worry, but
you won’t be the one on the job when a sixth-grader remembers
her science fair project is due the next morning.
I will be the one sewing doll clothes
and making cookies and buying pink stuff in increasingly larger
sizes. I don’t know how to tell Becky how honored I am that
she allowed me the privilege of being there in the “mom chair”
for Ellie’s birth. I know there were two grandmothers there
in the delivery room, one on this side, part of the welcoming committee,
and Becky’s mother there handing off the little spirit that
she will continue to watch over and love from beyond the veil.
At times like those, the veil is so
thin. Even though I have never been blessed with a visual, I have
learned to feel when the spirits of loved ones are close by. I didn’t
shed tears when I first met Ellie, but I cried when I sang a Primary
song to her later and felt someone else singing along, someone who
sings much better than I do. If Grandma Sue could sing along every
time I serenade a baby, I’m sure the result would be much
more soothing.
I could not help but reflect back to
when I had Scott. I delivered by C-Section, and the first thing
I heard was laughter, as my baby boy, out only to the waist, peed
on the doctor. Scott has been making me laugh ever since, so it
is fitting that he arrived to the sound of laughter.
Ellie arrived in a room filled with
love. Having children may start with something called labor, but
it is always a labor of love. True, the labor does not end, but
neither does the love.
© 2007 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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