enter grannie annie

people have called me grannie annie since i was in college. it started when i began to bake myself a batch of cookies every thursday afternoon. i had very little money for food in those years and the cookies were the only treat i could afford. i guess the smell of baking cookies permeated the student ghetto apartment building, and soon my friends were showing up regularly on thursdays to eat cookies, drink tea and talk. one day a kid named bri paused before leaving and said, you're going to make a great grandmother some day. and grannie annie was born.

a few years ago i happened to be on a plane when a 15 year old pregnant girl told me... you remind me of my grandmother, because i bought her milk and cookies and gave her my energy bar. i was young enough to feel a sting, but wise enough to recognize that she had paid me the greatest compliment in her lexicon.

as the sun set last night, on the barest cusp of a waxing moon, grannie annie stepped out of the bounds of imagination and into my skin. my second look at my new grandson was on the baby warming table, where he lay, screaming his little lungs out under the approving eye of his father and the baby nurses.

well, hello there, i said. he was very pink, very squirmy and very small. there is enough of katie's timbre in my voice that he stopped screaming and looked directly at me. oh, i said... this baby wants his mommy. as if in agreement, baby jake commenced his wailing.

when they brought him to katie, he was still screaming. hello, baby, she said. and he stopped screaming. look, i said, to katie, he knows you. you think? she asked, as her hand danced around his little face. without a doubt, i said.