New Business, Writer’s Block and Preventing Newborn Ignorance, One Baby at a Time

I will confess to not being terribly distressed to slam the door on 2015. Between the job layoff, sending my best non-human  friend Tuki to the Rabbit Field in the Sky and my mother on a slow cruise to Dementia Island, it’s been – and continues to be – interesting times.

Still, there have been bright spots. I’ve got a fledgling dissertation and thesis-writing business, and recently signed an agreement I can’t talk about to do some writing-related work that looks to be fascinating and fulfilling. And I’m pushing myself to write chapters 6 through 13 of my book, which means dredging up things I’d rather leave in the personal history sewer. The good part is that I’ll be able to throw a good number of them back there. The bad part is I won’t know which ones until I look.

Also, three weeks ago I became a grandmother. It’s not something I’d ever imagined. Which wasn’t about vanity or thinking my offspring wouldn’t be fit parents. It was about watching my friends who couldn’t have or didn’t want kids being made miserable by parents and others who were pressuring them about where the babies were.

I had kids because I wanted them. Not everybody wants them, and I had no clue about where my offspring – or their prospective partners – would fall on that spectrum. So I never really thought much about being someone’s Bubby.

But here I am, with a  wee grandson. We’ve spent a little time together, and I’m getting to know him. He’s not doing much other than the usual top four newborn things (sleeping, eating, pooping and crying), but he’s starting to add a fifth thing, staring, to his repertoire. That means he’s getting more interested in things, and that makes him more interesting.

My chief duty so far has been making sure his mother and other caregivers are fed. (My first instinct in any crisis or celebration is to start catering.) But now that he’s starting to get curious, I’m trying to answer the questions he’s not yet able to ask.

So I’m giving him tours around his house, explaining what things are (“This is a stove where food gets cooked. The top gets very hot and you don’t want to touch it then.” “These things in frames are artwork. Art is very important and good for your soul.”) and telling him about different things (“President Obama is trying to make it so assault rifles aren’t so available, which is good news.”) going on in the world.

There’s nothing sadder than a newborn who isn’t up on current events, after all.