Yesterday morning, dark o’clock:
Me: “So am I going on this trip by myself or are you coming with me?” (Sometimes my husband is difficult to wake up in the mornings. Sometimes, I am.)
Him: (leaping out of bed, suddenly awake at last.)
So we hit the road later than planned. Got to security, had the boarding passes, went to pull out my wallet and ID.
No wallet.
Me, wondering: so is he going to go on this trip by himself, or am I coming with him?
He spared me the sun exposure to run back to the car himself to see if it had fallen out of my purse there. That, and, I don’t run too fast and there truly was no time to spare. I plunked down, just out of the way of the people coming up the stairs there at San Jose’s new terminal as I searched again for the wallet I already knew wasn’t in there because I’d already taken nearly everything out of my purse and my knitting bag.
A clearly pregnant young woman was very sympathetic when I, feeling rather in the way, half-apologized: I was supposed to be going to see my first grandchild for the first time but…
Did she pray for me? I don’t know. I do know that my husband is not the go-to guy when you want a missing thing found.
He found it! (I wish I could somehow tell her to thank her for her kindness, whoever she was.)
The security guy saw him coming back and waved us to the front and got us immediately through his part. Thank you San Jose Airport security.
Remember how I say I don’t read knitting charts well with my head injury, that the x’s just bounce around? Yeah, and so I headed us to the gate one shy of the one we were supposed to go to. Richard, stressed, read the leaving time there and the relative lack of people and pronounced, “It’s 8:40. We’ve missed our flight.”
I stared at him disbelieving and in my fatigue could only exclaim, in the protest of a small child, “Is not!”
Is not indeed. Next gate. We got there after the boarding line had formed but just before the fliers filed on. Too close, way too close. We are not morning people and it showed.
And from there on out it was all wonderful. I finished Kim’s soft Malabrigo hat in the air and she later pronounced the colorway perfect. Our son picked us up in his in-laws’ car: his wife had needed a break from the snow and cold and some time to decompress at home, showing off the baby to her friends and family, and so they were blessing the baby in her parents’ ward.
Soft words and gentle rocking when he was screaming tired, and he settled down in my arms and drifted, quieting, to sleep. Bliss.
His other grandmother fed us and the other relatives who came and the brunch was beautiful, delicious, and carefully done within the realm of my ability–I can see why our daughter-in-law is such a nice person–and then we were off to church for the baby blessing. Kim waited till Parker was about to be taken up to the stand before wrapping him up in that lace christening blanket I’d brought with me, just to make sure it was pristine in the moment it came for.
Babies being only human.
In some ways.
Kim and her whole family were very generous in letting us have cuddle time, and I remember as a new mom how hard it was not to snatch my baby back to hold mine to myself. She got to see how tenderly her father-in-law cradled and snuggled him, and I loved her observing and learning more about where her own husband had gotten his tender touch from.
After the blessing, with the rest of the service continuing on, my Richard held Parker for awhile and then offered me a turn. Kim’s mother’s close friend, sitting on the other side of me, clearly so ached to hold him too that I knew that as the visiting grandmother the highest gift I could offer her was some of my limited time with him–and that she knew it too, though the only words spoken were a, “Would you like to hold him?” and an “Oh of course!” whispered back with such intense wishing and gratitude.
And then I got to see how much this dear woman loved my grandson, very much as if he were her own.
What more could I ask for him to have in his life? My son married into a good family with good friends and we are fortunate to be gathered into their circle. Kim is just the best.
Her mom fed us dinner, too, we visited, we rocked Parker some more, and then we were back to the airport and on our way. I started a new hat…
I took no pictures. Our son has a better camera than mine and he took many and I am happy to wait to see them. But we will both carry forever the pictures in our minds of that beautiful, beautiful baby boy, surrounded on all sides, as were we, by love.
We walked back again down that long terminal. Exit: stage left. Back to our car in the night, and my door had been caught all day on something in Richard’s haste to get back to me. I wondered if the battery was dead or if the Prius was sufficiently protected from losing power that way. Were we going on this last leg of the trip with our car, or not?
It carried us on our way just fine.