Fogie Mama
But unto every one of
us is given grace
according to the
measure of the gift of Christ.
—
Ephesians 4:7
I really blew my chance in the hospital.
Word had spread about the really, really old lady who had
given birth in Room 702. Volunteers bringing bouquets would look me over, look
away, roll their eyes and smirk.
The other new mothers, considerably younger than I was, eyeballed
me in horror as we all staggered stiffly down the halls in our bathrobes: "Oh,
my God! Do I look that bad?"
Nurses were peeking their heads into my room to get a load
of this phenomenon, this fossil in her mid-40s who'd delivered a baby in
between Lawrence Welk re-runs and bingo.
But darn. I blew my chance. What I should have done
was coax my grandmother, who was 93 at the time, to get into the bed and
pretend to be me. She could've put her teeth in a glass right next to the
baby's first binky on the hospital bedside table. Shock the pants off those
rubber-neckers! Ha! It would have been fun.
And fun is what this late-in-life, bonus baby has been. For
whatever the reason, we got a double dose of grace to handle this situation,
and turn it to gold.
It's fun for the rest of our family, too. Having a new
grandbaby has knocked off at least 10 years from the apparent ages of the two
grandmothers. They love it and they flaunt it. They're both Numero Uno in their
bridge groups again, bringing cute baby pictures while everybody else comes
empty-handed because their grandchildren are in those terrible spiked hair and
nose ring years, or long since grown and gone.
It's been fun for my husband. When he comes in the door, he
flings his briefcase one way, his trenchcoat the other, grabs the baby, who by
this time is hysterical with anticipation, and decades literally drain off his
face as he transforms from a graying captain of industry, a dignified company
president, into . . . Captain DaDa!
"Maddy FWYYYYYYYY!"
"Oh, Bouncy Girl! Bouncy! Bouncy, bouncy, bounce! Boocha,
boocha, booch!"
"Biggie go wump-pum! Googlia, googlia, goo."
What if his employees witnessed this? Then again, he
probably sounds the same in those technical engineering meetings. The thing is,
with younger dads, they can blame youthful exuberance when they act weird. Old
ones are just weird.
Then there's me. During pregnancy, I enjoyed alternating
between the two prestige parking places at the grocery store: the one for
"Expectant Mothers" and the one for "Senior Citizens." Now I enjoy having
Grecian Formula and baby formula in the same cart, just for the irony of it
all.
But there's a down side. I can't tell if it's a hot flash or
embarrassment when my cheeks fire up after someone exclaims, "Oh! Look at your
cute GRANDbaby!"
Then there's the fear of accidentally poisoning Maddy when
she wakes up crying with teething pain at 3 a.m. and I have to slide my glasses
down my nose and zoom in on the medicine bottle with one aging naked eyeball to
try to stabilize my fogie focal point enough to read the proper dosage.
Then there's the tendinitis from carrying that heavy carseat
with my aging right arm . . . the humiliation of sneezing in front of
unsuspecting grownups and saying, inexplicably, "Muh-SKOOZ me!" . . . the worry
that I'm skimping on my attention for our three teens.
The new baby is their joy, too. But they're jealous of her.
They say she'll have a lot more freedom as a teenager than they have now.
They say it'll be easy for her to blow off her curfew and
sneak out of the house late at night, since their dad and I will be so old by
then, we'll be COMATOSE by 9:30 p.m. every night.
Shhh. Nobody tell 'em. WE ALREADY ARE! †
