When August came in April.
I had somehow forgotten how tiny newborn babies are.
The first time I held her, it was as if someone had handed me a priceless piece of delicate porcelain which I was terrified of dropping. However, suddenly I was consumed with an overwhelming feeling of joy coursing through every fibre in my body. I thought my knees would buckle. That monumental, precious moment in time is now etched permanently into my psyche.
Our first meeting when our eyes met, knowing that we couldn't really 'see' each other, but, knowing our mutual symbiotic blindness allowed us to recognise our lives had moved forward a notch on our family axis.
In just a few short weeks, her presence has filled the space which always seemed to have had her name on it. These days, time now beats to the drum of her rhythmic tides alternating between sleeping and feeding.
When awake, her face scrolls through a myriad of expressions which will soon define her personality as she casts her arms skyward, flexing tiny muscles knowing she is at the start of a mighty journey of self-discovery.
Her minute hands wave, grasp and clutch the air around her as if casting a net, trying desperately to haul in every sensory experience she craves during these brief bouts of wakefulness.
Already she has made me cast a look over my shoulder, bringing my past into sharp relief. Rooms full of memories, friends long gone, places left behind, successes and failures morphed into one. Now, I find myself in a space that's brand new and comes with an extraordinary gift.
This continuum of life surely has some greater design when the most extraordinary joy arrives precisely when you need it the most.
Unknowingly she has made me realise I can no longer fool myself into believing I am middle-aged. My newly acquired status has nudged me out of that particular demographic. Competitive sport is something I now watch on television, as the thought of playing three sets of strenuous tennis is a little daunting.
Friends succumb to the vagrancy of life as one or two of them leave us with a suddenness that I never saw coming. bringing me up short in the face of my own mortality.
However, today she and I are at the epi-centre of a moment, cementing the very embodiment of wonder and innocence across three generations.
She is a timely reminder that life is essentially good and kind.
O.K., let’s mot wax too lyrical. t's not all plain sailing.
There is a problem with the name!
No.
Not hers, that had already been decided months ago. and I’ve become accustomed to her title. August.
Actually, I’m referring to Mine!
The implications are enormous as it would appear that I am destined to carry a new title for the balance of my existence.
Grandad, for me, is unthinkable for countless reasons. Grandpa runs a relatively poor second. Both smacks of ancientness flavoured with senility. Maybe we could be on first-name terms? A bit too chummy, one thinks. "Pops" carries a certain roguish charm, but it has no weight.
In the end, I went with one with a Balinese flavour, "Pak Paul."
Pops definitely wouldn't have cut it.
Like a newly arrived monarch, a firstborn grandchild bestows a raft of new titles at the beginning of her reign. Legions of aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins are created as she chisels her way to her ordained spot on the family tree.
April 5th 2021, is a date I will carry into my new role. It will undoubtedly become a password to activate one of my devices, and I will probably weep thinking of her each time I enter it.
Did I think of these thoughts when my children were newborns? It's hard to remember, consumed as we were nervously learning the ropes and complicated knots tying the enormousness of parenthood together.
I guess now, as a grandparent, I will have the luxury of pondering the unfathomable potential of this miracle, this new human being.
Will she soar? Write symphonies? Dance, sing, teach, cure a disease, write a great novel? Her road, not yet travelled, stretches to the faraway horizon, all shiny and new.
The tyranny of distance means there will be much that I will miss during this stage of her development. Her parents will take the reins to guide her until she finds her independent streak which, even now, lurks between her surface.
And we?
We will reluctantly return to the other side of the planet without her in our lives for a while. But we will leave behind, knowing that she is in the safest of hands during our absence.
As we prepare to leave this wonderful city, I have come to the conclusion I have never arrived somewhere as somebody and left as somebody else, but August had the power to do that to me.
Vancouver, Canada April 2021
