Being Grandma - true unadulterated JOY!

Last post I wrote about JOY and well no dialog about joy is complete without talking about being grandma. This is a pretty important G in my 7G network of things that keep me on the Open Road Unknown.

Grandma days bring me pure unadulterated joy! They just do. While parenting was an amazing privilege with a ginormous eighteen year and counting commitment, as a grandparent you just ARE. You are in the moment. You get full nights of sleep and then when they come over you can just be. 

I'm not sure why my daughter got a mini me when I did not, ha, ha! My blonde and blue eyed daughter married a blond and blue eyed man and so look what they got. She's freaking adorable! And I also just LOVE the juxtaposition of me and my daughter being so dynamically different, in our looks and our personality, it has made us the best of friends in her adulthood. Thank goodness we made it thru the teenage years!

But in any case, this little girl is the apple of my eye and a just LOVE being her grandma.And it's just worth mentioning because I've been writing about how JOY is different than HAPPINESS because it incorporates all that is, including pain and loss. I feel acutely the absence of Brian at all of my granddaughters fun milestones. She has asked many times about the picture on the nightstand of me and Brian. Fortunately, the first time she asked about it Kayla was standing there. She said "This is grandma, this is ....?". It took my breath away, like I had stage fright, what do I say? Then I heard Kayla say, "that's grandpa". So every time she walks by the photo the conversation is replayed and she inserts grandpa. And it is the cutest most beautiful voice that says it and I can feel Brian's pleasure at being her grandpa. It's hard you know? But it doesn't keep me from celebrating every day that I get to be grandma. And I really think this example embodies all that I've come to understand joy to be - a juxtaposition of celebration and loss, of happy and sad, of beautiful and ugly disappointment, and so on. Have an amazing and JOYFUL New Year everyone! 

Making cookies is important ...

I couldn't figure out who taught her to dip cookies in milk. This was something Brian always did. I asked my daughter about it and it wasn't here. Mystery solved, it was uncle TJ. Makes me smile.