By:
Lois Wyse, Crown Publishers, Inc. New York
Pages: 17,18
ISBN: 0-517-57157-9
FYI - a book given to Lauree by her sisters - Robbie and Shelly
From
Chapter: Grandma Me
Begins by asking:
Who can ever imagine the sense of grandmotherhood?
The
set up is: she is telling her friend that she is ready
to be a grandmother and understood what all that meant.
But the friend's smiled indicated to her that - no matter
what you expect, you won't be prepared...
...and then she sees her granddaughter for the first time...
To
my shock and amazement I burst into tears.
But not just ordinary, run-of-the-mill tears.
This was old-fashioned, heartrending sobbing.
For in that moment I was touched by every life
that had preceded this new one.
My
father, dead before even my son was born, was there.
So, too, were my grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles,
aunts, cousins. In a great, convulsive tide I was swept back
to my beginnings—child, young wife, mother.
I
was filled with the enormity of that sense of belonging,
all of us, each to the other. We are bound by our own inexorable,
nonending saga. We are the human story.
We are us.
And now she is us.
And only God knows what lies ahead of us—and all life.
No
wonder I cried inconsolably.
No
wonder my friend could not describe it.