The first time I was pregnant, I secretly hoped for a girl. It
had nothing to do with dressing her up in frilly clothes or styling her
hair in perfectly coiffed French braids. At thirty-three, I was thrilled
to be having a baby and would have happily left the hospital with
either gender but having never had a brother, I was under the delusional
impression that I was better equipped to deal with whatever a daughter
might throw at me; that there would be fewer surprises. I also hoped
that that fantasy daughter would someday turn out to be a friend that
would share shopping trips and lunches to cute French bistros.
I never did master those tricky braids but I was
blessed with a beautiful, smart, funny daughter. (I was also lucky
enough to produce a male offspring a couple of years later but that's
another story.) Since my sister had also been blessed with a daughter,
we hoped the girls would turn out to be best friends (check) who
wouldn't mind occasionally hanging out with their moms (check). What we
could never have envisioned is that they would be kind enough to grace
us with our first grandchildren within eight months of one another.
There
may have been some great sales in the mall today. And that French
bistro was probably serving a mean onion soup. But the four of us had no
time for any of that. We sat on the floor of our mother's (Nana's)
house, pouring over boxes of old photos, sharing a take-out lunch, and
making every silly face we could think of to make the newest members of
our family laugh.
No shopping bag full of bargains or fancy three-course meal can beat that.
This blog was originally published under Coleen's other blog ForeverAMom. You can check it out at www.blogher.com/foreveramom
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