June Bubbe

"I wasn't the one who accidentally folded you up in the stroller. That was grandma." I was trying to plead my case, clear it with the bosses so I could break up my first long evening of babysitting with a stroll. 

"Yes, but you're a grandma now," my daughter shot back. Well what is that supposed to mean? Old? Frail? Incompetent? All of the above, I take it. 

Sensing the affront, she took a different tack. "I don't want her walking around the city in the dark." 

It's June. Less than three weeks shy of the summer solstice. And it was only 6:30. After a lifetime of picking battles -- or trying to -- I knew enough to let this one go.  

Long ago, well before I was old and frail and incompetent, I was a new mother. And by that, I mean I was a tyrant when it came to anybody who wasn't my new baby. I trusted nobody, insisted that everybody abide by my rules. I remember detecting my mother-in-law's eye-roll through the back of her head when I barked at her for using a regular towel to bathe my little jewel. Not one of the ten hooded baby towels, laundered in Dreft, that I had shlepped along. As if. 

These children (yes they are in their thirties, but children to me) in whom I have reluctantly but graciously entrusted the care of my new granddaughter are as authoritarian as, well, as I was, once. The transformation came slowly during the pregnancy, but the signs were there. There were the vaccine requirements and the infant CPR classes and the explanations about why the baby would be sleeping in their room for at least six months (a big compromise, as a year is the current recommendation). No leaving the baby in the car seat to sleep. I thought they were reminding me not to ever leave the baby in the car, or maybe on the roof of the car, or maybe by the side of the road. How would they survive if they had to come home and take the finally sleeping baby out of the car seat? My brain screamed silently, I looked into the procedures for my inevitable custody battle. I pretended, as well as I could, that I was not deeply concerned. 

Seven weeks in, my granddaughter -- my granddaughter -- appears to be thriving in the care of these novices.  And, oddly, they seem to be thriving too. 

Summer solstice for most, winter solstice for me, I suppose. But it's been worth the wait.