My world has always been colored pink. With one daughter, then another, followed by a third, my child rearing days were a haze of pink.
It started before the girls were born, when the baby’s gender still remained a mystery, then birth times three, followed by the hurried call to the stationer with the name and date to be placed on birth announcements, inevitably colored pink. The trend continued with pink tipped diaper pins, pacifiers, little barrettes, ribbons, booties, and bonnets, all in shades of pink and pastels. These were the favored colors in clothes, tutus, leotards, ballet slippers, and anything else that touched their world. Immersed in a pinky-pink world, I did not even notice that blue was absent from the color spectrum, only to re-appear when my daughters grew old enough to wear jeans. When a “boy” present was needed, I realized I was clueless about clothes for boys, toys for boys and needed direction from friends who had mothered a boy.
Now, we just learned that our youngest daughter is pregnant with a baby boy. With the new sonograms his boyhood has been seen and confirmed. We are delighted to discover the color blue. It started this past weekend when I finished an afghan blanket and needed blue embroidery threads for the baby’s name and birth date. I had made blankets for our granddaughters using a combination of shocking pink and rose for this purpose. Now, we needed to buy “boy” colors. I visited a needlepoint store and stood before a wall of rainbow colored threads with at least twenty different shades of blue. After much deliberation, I chose two, handling them like jewels, because at that moment, they were.
While there, I noticed needlepoint canvases hanging with push pins on a cork board. I had betrayed my needlepoint heritage by knitting the blanket for the last few months, but now I was returning to my roots. It felt good to see the canvases displayed, some saying Baby Sleeping with boy motifs, a red fire engine with a Dalmatian dog nearby, an airplane zooming in a sky with clouds, a farm tractor with a bright sun above, and a sarcastic one that said, “You wake him, you take him!” I chose the fire engine motif, bought appropriate threads and left the store.
I was on my way to becoming a grandmother to a boy.
My husband and I are embarking on this new adventure as senior citizens, quite a bit older than when our granddaughters were born. Our granddaughters, now teen-agers, are becoming independent, mature, and not needing baby-sitters. We know our new grandson will not reach that stage very soon. We know how very much we love our girls, and we know we have more love to share with him. True, we are older now but we intend to be an important part of this baby’s life. We love him so very much, even before we have laid eyes on him, and he will teach us, step by step, how to grandparent a little boy in a world that is all about the color blue.
