When you first have the responsibility of your baby, in most cases, nothing is alright, and nothing is okay, and nothing is fine…and you feel mildly overwhelmed, or dreadfully so, depending on the baby and your surroundings, but it takes a bit to find a flow…to know what to do, how to do it, and when to do it…to know what absolutely does not work and to know what effectively solves a need or a problem…everything is rather like an experiment really, and whether you have a partner, are on your own, have family, or no one, it is still, for the most part YOU & BABY trying to sort out how it’s gonna be…

You don’t know if you will do a good job, you don’t know if this child will be OKAY at all. It is such an overwhelming number of unknowns that you really have no choice but to live in the present and take one day at a time, day after day, for years…All of this is ALSO the case when it is decades later and it is the baby of your baby…you help and assist in every and all ways that you are asked, because now it is not “your first rodeo” and you offer advice as needed and aid when prompted, and succor when the momma is mildly overwhelmed, or dreadfully so, and you help as much as needed until it’s alright, it’s okay, it’s fine…This may not be the case in some families, but in mine, having the good fortune to be able to plunge headfirst into an opportunity to build two houses next-door to each other, and be able to be my daughter’s neighbor and the Nana-Next-Door, it is how it all was and how it still is, even though the first baby became an adult last week…

In a blur of excitement and awe in the last month, the baby who made me a Nana graduated high school, registered for her first semester at the county college, turned 18, and then grabbed her passport and took a trip to Grand Cayman…every ounce of worry I had sort of melted away when I saw her posted photos of driving into the eye-popping engulfing airport which is JFK, then her photos of exquisitely aqua calm water and fluffy white sand, then her vacation chic outfits, and then her Sports Illustrated cover-worthy bikini posts…then my heart tingled the other night when my phone dinged with a late night text message, written to both me and her mother, “our sushi dinner was lucky” and a photo of their receipt for $116, the lucky number in our family; my November 6th to my daughter’s January 16th… and this girl, this woman, sees her receipt at the table of her resort, and probably smiled to herself, and maybe chuckled a little, to see the 116 and then thinks of us, the momma and the Nana, and from one late night text I felt pretty sure that It’s alright, It’s okay, It’s fine, Everything’s fine…