Mack Edward

Yesterday, Dec. 30, 2010, at 8:02 a.m. Mack Edward Felt was born. Our first grandson, our second grandchild.
We are grandparents.
Grandparents.
And our son is a father. Our daughter, a mother.
This life chain continues.
Lucas and Melissa called from the car on their way to the hospital. We had texted throughout the day. Contractions seven minutes a part. We learned later she had shopped, returning shirts from Brooks Brothers that were too short in the sleeve for Lucas. Climbing the stairs to their third-floor condo. Unsure that this could be the real thing. So, when we talked to them enroute they were light-hearted. Chatty. Convinced they would be sent back home. No doubt false labor.
That was 9:30ish Thursday evening. Maybe. Then a text that she had been admitted. This was the real thing. Then we learned later in the evening, now early on Dec. 30, my mother's birthday, that hard labor had ensued and an epidural was going to be administered.
At 7:30 Pacific time, I texted a tentative "OK?" and less than an hour later came a photograph of newborn Mack. Long arms like his father. Long legs. Beautiful color. Gorgeous lips and a pug nose.
the thing about this grandparent experience is it catapults you back to the moment when the earth tilted on its axis and you became a parent. To the moment when that child is experiencing in their way but in a universal way that moment of birth. And for a moment I was in Norton's Children's Hospital in Louisville on a muggy, hot July morning with Dr. Lavery announcing that we had a boy. A boy. A son. The first male in my small McGaw clan in 51 years (I was so good to my parents to give them grandchildren at such a young age.) They put Lucas' warm, wet body on my stomach and I remember thinking how silky he felt. How alive. Lucas got to cut the umbilical cord and he hasn't left the side of his wife or son since. Nor will he.
They will occupy their posh digs in the impressive Northwestern Unversity Prentice Maternity Center for another 24 hours and then venture out into their home, its nursery painted, prepped, outfitted for the arrival of their son and for the start of this time when their universe tilts anew on its axis.
As has ours.
So Happy New Year. It's been nine months since last I posted. Then it was to write about Grace's birth. And now Mack's.
Two names that a year ago at this time weren't stitched in my heart, she said, sounding so like a grandmother.