Please scroll down to a new December 24th node by me. This is something I wrote last year as a noder challenge about Christmas Eve a year from then.
Today my daughter gave me the greatest gift for which a mother could ever wish. She gave me a grandchild. My first and long awaited. I was beginning to worry that I would never have grandchildren in my own lifetime. For so long, she felt no urge to have a baby, that tug and pull which kept me distracted for years, brought tears when I saw other mothers with their offspring, their progeny, being pushed in prams, or strollers through green parks and flowered gardens in foreign cities. Cherub-faced toddlers pushed by young nannies on wooden plank swings.
For years she felt no reason to pack trunks full with baby dresses, bonnets and bibs to be tucked away in the dark recesses of the half-basement beneath her California bungalow, awaiting that blessed day when she could play dress-up with an actual baby instead of a cloth and plastic doll a flesh and blood baby which would be a part of her–a part of him, that young man who makes her heart sing like no other could.
For æons it seems, she had not felt, the way I did, a child gathering itself to be born, could not picture herself with a daughter at her breast, as yellow sunlight slants its way into her darkened room. Had no wish to feel its gentle sleeping breath upon her own skin. Did not long to hear the fractured words, skipped syllables, the lisp of phrases…the name that is her own from the soft lips of a child which bears my DNA. She had no urge to give birth to my grandchild who would also be a part of him who made me sing as no other could.
And now, on the night before Christmas she has given me the end to all my dreams.