I was married young, actually we were both young, too young; I was 21 and Dale had just turned 22. I had completed my teacher training the weekend before the wedding and I believe Dale had started his apprenticeship at Cominco in Trail earlier in the year. Being married young and living in a small town meant we had our children quickly, that’s what you did back then. I’m not complaining. Having our children when we were so young meant that they were grown and gone before we were out of our forties. However, I did expect that we would have been young grandparents, seeing that we started so early. But our boys had other ideas. And times have changed. No one, and I mean no one, finishes school at 21 years of age and gets a job in his or her chosen field in just months now. I was 22 when I got a permanent, full time job with the Trail School District. That just doesn’t happen now. I know some young people in their early 30s still waiting for any type of permanent employment, other than serving or working retail. By the time Dale was 26 he had finished his apprenticeship and was working as a tradesman, with skills and abilities that would allow him to progress as far as he wanted to go. We know people in their forties waiting to get apprenticeships.

But let me get back to the grandparent issue. Both our boys are over 30. One is married, the other has a steady live-in girlfriend. When we question them about the possibility of grandbabies, they each point to the other. One even teased us that he would never have children. However, he also said he would never get married and he is. So, we knew that in his case the babies would come along when his wife decided. After all, she was the one who decided they needed to get married after they had been together for seven years! So we waited, and we made not so subtle hints about our readiness to be grandparents. We made them all the time and our boys laughed them off. Our daughter-in-law told us they wanted children, but we worried about the timeline. Getting pregnant in your 30s is harder than getting pregnant in your 20s. I joked to a friend that if my kids waited much longer, I would be carrying my grandchild around on the front of my walker. We stopped dropping giant, subtle hints in favour of watching. Was our daughter-in-law having a drink? Yes, rats! She must not be trying to get pregnant, that’s the first thing you do when you start trying, you stop drinking. Every time we were together we looked – yup, still drinking.

Fast forward to Valentine’s Day. Our son had been away on business and we had invited our daughter-in-law over for dinner while he was gone. She had begged off but now that our son was home they wanted to take us up on the offer. I was working on dinner when they arrived. Our daughter-in-law sat herself on the stool at the island, like she always does and our son got everyone drinks. I pointedly looked at the drink and raised my eyebrow to my husband. In that silent language that long-time married people have I shouted, She’s drinking, no baby! We continued to chat until dinner was ready and then we sat down and ate. I don’t remember what we had, but we had ice cream cake for dessert, it’s our daughter-in-law’s favourite treat. So we were eating our ice cream cake – which for the record is not cake, it’s just ice cream – when our daughter-in-law got up, saying she had a valentine’s gift for me. I was flattered, and a little worried, as I hadn’t got her anything, but I accepted her gift, a little blue birdie on a wooden spool. There was a ribbon around the spool saying “A little birdie”

I looked at it in surprise. I don’t like birds, but little birds are okay, I guess. I held in my hand and thanked her. Our son was on his phone, as he always is and he was clearing his throat. He had a bad cold and had been sneezing and wiping his eyes all night. Our daughter-in-law smiled and told me there was a message, to unroll the ribbon. My heart started to beat a little faster and I noticed my son was now holding his phone up. I unrolled the ribbon and read – A little birdie told me you’re going to be a grandma! October 2016.

I was up out of my chair and hugging my daughter-in-law almost before I had finished reading, tears in my eyes. Dale was wiping his eyes and so was our son, who had captured the moment on video. Amid tears and laughter we chattered away, and then I remembered – the drink! My son shook his head smiling. He hadn’t made her a drink, he just pretended to, because he knew we were always watching. She was just five weeks along, so she asked us to keep it a secret for another seven weeks. While we wanted to shout it from the rooftops, to take out ads in papers, we agreed and held the information close to our hearts, smiling at each other at random times, whispering “Hey Grandpa, how’s it going?” or “We’re going to be grandparents!” All of our friends and family knew we were hoping for a grandbaby and so of course during those seven weeks they asked us about it. We deflected, bobbed and weaved, and then outright lied. We didn’t tell anyone, we waited for their go ahead. On the way to 12 weeks we got a text with a sonogram photo. It was so hard not to share that! But we didn’t, we saved the text and looked at it often. Several days before the 12th week milestone they told us we could tell other family members. I called my mom to tell her she was finally going to be a great-grandma. Dale called his dad. Then the Facebook announcement was made, and I could finally write this blog entry.

To say we are excited is the most massive understatement of all time. I want to rush out and buy carseats for all of our vehicles, to buy all the things the baby will need to have our house. We will take that precious child whenever we can, heck, part of the plan of us moving here and me retiring was to help them with daycare costs, if our daughter-in-law wants to go back to work. If not, we’ll take him or her to give them a break. At our age it’s not a good idea to wish your life away, there’s more behind us than ahead of us, but if a spring and summer were ever going to fly by, this would be the year for it.