Jilliebean’s Boots

Some girls just seem to have it all! Looks, clothes, style. Jillian is already one of those girls at 7 months, with her jeans tucked into her trendy white furry boots. She looks like she knows it, too.

Happy Halloween!

Look what came out of the pumpkin patch! It’s the grandtwins — Hardy and Jillie.

Baby Pics

The twins are now six months old — pretty, sweet, and smart!

Twins, Together

Hardy has made a discovery!

Jillie is crawling.

Jillie’s Ride Home

Jillian got dropped off at her daddy’s office at the end of the day Wednesday, so her mama and twin brother could go visit Nay Nay, her other grandmother. Jillie usually gets to go to Nay Nay’s mid-week so there’s a gathering of three generations of girls, but this time, Hardy got to go with the women, and Jillie went to Daddy’s MojoLoco.

They drove home by the reservoir and down busy Lake Harbor Drive. Many evenings, Jillie’s dad calls me on his commute to catch up. It’s called multi-tasking.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Nothing much. Driving home from work down Hillsboro Road.”

“What’ve you been doing?”

“I visited a new critique group last night, and my book order has shipped — I’m expecting 600 books to arrive on my front porch.”

“RRAAAAA!” Jillie is not one to tune up or have thoughts about crying. She just outright yells out painfully loud. “RRAAAAA!” And the first sound is as loud as the last one.

“What’s she crying about?”

“She doesn’t like to stop. We’re sitting at a red light.”

“RRAAAAA!”

Then, instant silence.

“You heard anything more on Steve McNair?”

“No, nothing more.”

“I had to go to Hattiesburg this morning on business, so I took the opportunity to drive over to Mt. Olive to see his grave. It’s just a small stone with his name and the dates. Nothing special.”

“RRAAAAA! RRAAAAA!”

“It’s OK Jillie, we’ll be rolling in a minute.”

“RRAAAAA!”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She doesn’t like to stop. It’s another red light.”

Then, silence.

“We’re moving now. How’s Mamaw?”

“Her back hurts, her eyesight is fading, and she’s having a colonoscopy next Monday.”

“RRAAAAA!”

“Jillie, Daddy can’t run a red light. Just a minute, just a minute, and we’ll be going.”

Then, silence.

And so it was, all the way home, Jillie yelled at every red light — every time the car stopped — and sat sweetly and silently as the car moved.

Doubling Up: Jillie and Hardy, 3 months

The Two A. M.

Jillian and Hardy at 7 weeks

The Saturday before Memorial Day was the first night Jillie and Hardy slept in their crib in the nursery. Their first seven weeks had been spent in Moses baskets in the master bedroom. I slept in the bedroom down the hall on the northern side of the house and agreed to do the two-in-the-morning feeding.

No big deal, you say. But these are twins. And you’ve never heard Jillie yell when she wants her bottle.

It was Hardy who cried first, and I didn’t hear him. It was his daddy who heard him from the other side of the split-plan house over the monitor. I heard the second cry, though, and I was up and in there. “I’ve got it,” I said, and Daddy went back to bed.

I put the bottles in warm water on the coffee table in the living room, raced to change Hardy’s diaper, put him on the Boppy cushion on the couch, put his bib on, woke Jillie up (yes, you have to do that with twins!), changed her diaper, put her bib on, settled on the couch beside Hardy, with Jillie nestled between me and the Boppy, her head against my leg, which was Indian-style. With my two hands, I put two bottles in two mouths.

At this feeding they were in unison. They drank at the same pace, both being satisfied with an ounce remaining. They hum and ah when they drink, and they were right together, right on key — a duet. Ten sucks, then high-pitched “ah, ah, ah, ah,” each with a lilt on the end, then ten sucks, then “ah, ah, ah, ah” and so on.

Two little warm bodies to hold close, two sleeping babies, double the pleasure, double the treasured moment. A chorus of ahs. Priceless.

Growing!

It’s hard to believe that Jillian and Hardy are almost six weeks old, and I’ve had my first Mother’s Day as a grandmother. I even got a card!

I’ve also got new pictures…

Jillie and Hardy on the Boppy

Jillie (L) and Hardy (R)

The Wedding Hankie, Part II

It started the day before Thanksgiving, 2008, when  they had the ultrasound. I’d asked to be a part of it by phone. I won’t say anything, just set the phone on the table and let me listen, I begged. Baby A was a girl. It was quiet as the technician moved the wand toward Baby B. Then, an eruption of laughter. There it is! The wand had landed on the determining factor. Baby B was a boy.

“He’ll have to wear your old wedding-hankie bonnet home from the hospital!” I said before we hung up. My words drifted into thin air and stone walls.

I once wrote a story about that old wedding-hankie bonnet. It was published in Chocolate for a Woman’s Soul II in 2003, and in my own book of personal essays, Pink Butterbeans: Stories from the heart of a Southern woman in 2005.

**********

I’m just a lacy hankie
As pretty as can be.
But with some tiny stitches
A bonnet I will be.

I’ll be worn home from the hospital
Or on the Christening Day,
After which I’ll be neatly folded
And carefully packed away.

Crinkly, aging tissue paper cradles the tiny white bonnet. Delicate batiste trimmed in scalloped lace and satin ribbons to tie under a new baby’s chin, it came as a gift to my firstborn son, along with a poem clumsily pecked out on an old typewriter. He wore the bonnet home from the hospital. Then the treasured keepsake was neatly folded and carefully packed away. . . .

On her wedding day we’re told,
Each bride must wear something old.
So what would be more fitting than unpacking li’l old me?
A few stitches snipped and a wedding hankie I’ll be.

And if perchance it is a boy,
Someday he’ll surely wed,
And to his bride he can present
The hankie once worn on his head.

**********

But what did he do? Eloped! Yes. He and Nicole eloped. I sort of guessed, but they waited two weeks before they told me because she was trying to get up enough nerve to tell her mother and father first.

**********

. . . “You are marr-i-i-i-i-ied?”

“Yes, we’re married.”

“But, but . . . you didn’t have your wedding hankie!” I stumbled over the words.

“My what?”

“Your wedding hankie. It was a gift when you were born.”

“I didn’t know I had one.”

“Yes, you have one. Your bride was supposed to carry it down the aisle.”

“We didn’t have an aisle.”

“Well, she could have held it while repeating her vows. It’s the bonnet you wore on your head when you came home from the hospital. We were supposed to present it to your bride.”

“I didn’t know.”

“She was supposed to remove some stitches and make it into a handkerchief to carry during the ceremony. It has a poem and everything.”

“Our ceremony was pretty without it. We had candles and wrote our own vows.”

“And then some day, your bride is supposed to add back a few stitches and make it into a bonnet again for your baby to wear home from the hospital. It’s an heirloom!” I shrieked.

“Oh.”

Ohhhh? I’ve waited twenty-five years for this special moment — never to be.

The bonnet remains a bonnet. Its white satin ribbons hang loose, untied. . . .

“I can’t be-lieve you got married without your wedding hankie,” I sputtered under my breath. “Well, we’ll just save it for your first child to wear home from the hospital.”

My head whirling, I started folding up my frenzied sentiments, packing up my foiled schemes, and setting my sights down the road a bit. By golly, when the first grandchild is born, I’ll personally deliver that bonnet to the hospital, place it on the newborn’s head, and loop the loose ribbons into a neat bow. And this new child will surely make it to the altar with the hankie once worn on his father’s head.

**********

By golly, my moment came April 18, 2009, when Winston Hardy, ten days old, was set to come home from the hospital.

His twin, Jillian Dawson, had come home two days earlier.

“Now, you’ll have to follow us in your car,” my son said. “We’ve got two baby seats in the back and don’t have room for you.”

“Okay, fine.”

I collected two cameras, my purse and keys, my Chocolate for a Woman’s Soul II book, and scurried to my Outback, breathing hard. My son drives fast, and I wanted to stay right behind him. I wanted to take a picture of them driving to the hospital to get this special bundle of little boy. “Nicole, do you have the wedding-hankie bonnet?” I yelled before I closed the car door.

“Yes, I’ve got everything.”

At the hospital’s NICU unit, my son and I went through the customary three-minute scrub, keeping an eye on Nicole over our right shoulders. She couldn’t wait. She rubbed in some hand sanitizer and went straight for the baby.

The place was abuzz with nurses and a doctor, having to say good-bye to little Hardy, now four pounds eight ounces, a favorite of the staff. Those who could gathered around to watch Nicole dress him. The place was full of comments, stories, laughter, oohs and ahs.

Nicole put the soft white fancy sleeper monogrammed with the initials WHB in blue on the baby.

Then came the moment.

She — the mama, the bride who didn’t get the opportunity to be presented formally with the wedding hankie or to carry it during her wedding ceremony — with her own delicate hands, placed the tiny white batiste bonnet on Hardy’s little head, looped the satin ribbons into a neat bow, and stepped back admiringly.

“There he is.” She smiled. A precious boy, wearing his Poppy’s pen name, his great-grandfather’s surname, my maiden name, and the bonnet worn by his father 35 years ago.

The moment was rich in emotion. It was hard to hold the tears back, but I had to work quickly. I placed the Chocolate book in his isolette, focused, and snapped a few pictures, while trying to explain the significance of the unfolding scene to the staff circling us.

Hardy in the Wedding Hankie Bonnet

This new child wore home the hankie once worn on his father’s head.

Generation Gap

I have a bone to pick with my son.

For more than three decades I held on to his special baby things: his “wedding hankie” bonnet and the little yellow outfit he wore home from the hospital, his yellow brush and comb, two buntings, a navy wool coat and hat my mother made, the little blue and white leather newborn saddle-oxford shoes, the outfit he wore on his first birthday, and bunches of other nice clothes and shoes and blankets and gowns and booties. Even his stuffed raccoon pillow without the stuffing. And his well-used Winnie-the-Pooh blanket. They were all so wonderfully 1970’s special, and I knew he’d want them one day.

At Christmastime I boxed them all up and took them to the celebration around the lighted tree. My son and daughter-in-law were four months away from twins. We’d all enjoy going through the box and looking at these tiny baby things, and they would have meaning and purpose now.

Of course, I didn’t really expect them to bring their newborn son home from the hospital in the same outfit my son was brought home in. Not much anyway. It was two-piece, yellow polyester-crepe material, white pointed collar, with a tiny choo-choo train on the front. It would have been so special for this new baby to wear it home, too, but every parent deserves the right to choose something fresh and new … and in style, from the appropriate century and millennium. When I mentioned the option of using the old, I was told, “We want to pick out something new.”

Okay. Fine. Why would anyone want something new when they could have something special? Though old. Think of all the times all through the years we’d be able to say, He wore the same suit home from the hospital that his father did. I didn’t say it; I just thought it.

We did use the “wedding hankie” bonnet, however. The baby boy wore the same bonnet home from the hospital that his father did. (That’s a separate story.)

“Will you wash it?” Nicole asked me from her hospital bed.

“I’m not sure it was ever washed for my son,” I told her. But I washed it, carefully, by hand, and placed it around a balled-up wash cloth to dry.

After the babies came home, I looked through the nursery chest-of-drawers and in the closet … and I didn’t see my son’s special items.

“Where are all your baby clothes I saved for you?”

“They’re in a box in the top of the closet.”

“The top of the closet? Why aren’t you using them?”

“Well, we might take them down and put an outfit on the baby for a minute and take a picture of him in it … but, Mama, they’re old.”

“But they’re still good!”

“We do want to hold onto them … they’re vintage.”

“VIN-TAGE?”

“Yeah. Vintage.”

Vintage. A dated object. Old-fashioned or obsolete.

“Humph.”

At first bathtime a brush was needed. I placed the “vintage” yellow brush on the countertop next to the kitchen sink where we were going to sponge-bathe the baby.

“Mama, we can’t use that old brush on the baby’s head!”

“Why not? I washed it. With soap.”

Much laughter ensued. Deflated, I ended up returning to the nursery to retrieve the NEW white brush that came over here on a boat all the way from China, weeks in route over a nasty ocean, and was NOT washed, I might add.

I understand washing. I birthed my babies in an era during which we had to sterilize everything. We spent more time cleaning and sterilizing than we did taking care of babies. Yet I remember scads of times, seeing other parents — not me, of course — pick up a pacifier that had fallen on the floor and give it a fffft-fffft brush-off on their shirttail, like that was going to wipe off all the germs.

Dirty. Clean. Old. New. Vintage.

Vintage. Humph.

Indulge me.

A few more photos…

Jillian and Hardy

"Jilliebean"

Hardy pulling at my heartstrings

Winston Hardy

This is the little boy who will carry on my father’s surname and nickname, the name I grew up with, the name I still use, the name that goes with my published stories and on the covers of books. This is the little boy who carries forward my husband’s pen name. This little boy, 4 pounds 4 ounces, has some big shoes to fill. Big shoes.