Magnificence

God KNOWS I have my troubles with my mother but dammit, if I am nothing but the bridge between her and her love of babies, then I have done my job.

Lily and the boys and I went up to see my mother today and took her a plant and cards and candy and she was in heaven, holding Gibson. He gave her some of his precious smiles and she was the envy of all.

"Put him in my arms," she told Lily and Lily did. She'd been sitting on the floor, nursing that boy and she gave him to my mother and my mother...well, look at the pictures.

And then Owen came home with me and we had just about the finest time anyone could ever have. We played and we laughed and he told me that he needed wings for his feet and his arms and his head so that he could "fly up, like a bird."
We fed the chickens on the back steps and he said to them, "Chickens, I Owen. This MerMer," and he motioned to me. It felt like a meeting with the Pope or something. I don't know why.

I am cooking green beans and potatoes out of the garden. I got ant-bit, digging up those potatoes and I don't even care. I made my mother happy today, even if it was only because I am the mother of the mother of her newest great-grandbaby. Mr. Moon and I are taking off tomorrow. I have to find a book to read to him out loud as he drives me. I think we are going to Mobile. There's a story there. I'll tell it later.

There was a lot more. Fleas, baby chicks, a black snake when I went into the woods off the path to pee when I was taking my walk. That snake felt no more like a threat to me than the ferns which grow up in that spot where I stop to squat. He took off and I could only begin to register him before he had disappeared. My grandson, playing with the soap in the bathtub, washing my arms for me and demanding that I find the soap every time he lost it in the bubbles. He found it once himself and told me, "I see it with my eyes."

Those eyes. His mama's, his daddy's, my husband's. Those brown, beautiful eyes.
"Owen," I said. "You are clean as a bean."
"I not a bean. I Owen."
He is very sure about this right now. He is Owen.

When I am 85, if I ever achieve that milestone, I just pray and hope that I can be somewhere safe and comfortable and have my great-grand child put into my arms.  I wonder if that baby will have brown eyes or blue.
It doesn't matter. I will look into them and I will know that all of this, all of THIS, has been magnificent.

I am drowning in it right now, just as my mother drowned today in Gibson's smiles.

That's all. And that's plenty.