A Special Relationship

One of the many changes as we get older is our position in the family. Now I am in an older generation, the grandmother, with younger ones coming along in generations that will follow me, but once I was a special first born, the first grandchild on my mother's side, and a first niece for my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Marty who I visited this week. It was during "The War," my daddy was away in the Army, and Margaret was the one who drove my mother to the hospital that hot August day when she went into labor with me. And who else but Uncle Marty on a trip to New York in 1945 brought home a pink snowsuit for my first winter. In his measured, deep, New England drawl he explained, "Well she was the first baby in our family." We talk about things that happened years ago in the family, and I am set straight on some facts that my child's brain didn't remember exactly right. We have loved many of the same people and jump from present to past as we share memories about them. Their life stories are my stories, too. They are the only ones left who have known me all my life, from when I was a curly haired rambunctious little girl, a young woman beginning a family of my own, to now, a retired grandmother. When I am with them, I sometimes feel like that little girl again, but I know how blessed I am to be with family, these wonderful and delightful people who still know and love me after all these years.