By this time, my oldest sister (the most maternal, meant to have children-type woman I know) had been married for ten years. No children. By now, they were going through all the trials and tribulations that exploring a fertility problem entails. My brother had no children and my other sister didn't as well.
My oldest sister finally gave up the idea of having children and went back to school to get a vocational nursing degree. She got it, found a great job which she loved and wouldn't you know it? She got pregnant and her daughter was born one year after my wedding. Evidently, nature finally got a clue as to what she'd been trying to do lo these many years. She had her second daughter the following year.
Ah, a pattern is beginning to develop here. The next year, my brother and his wife had their first son. I'd been married a little over three years by this time. I guess it was my turn because I was next when my daughter was born the following year. Next, along came my brother's second son a year later. Where there were none, now there were five little cousins all in a row, all approximately one year apart. Amazing! My son followed this lineup nine years later when he was born in 1988. Just like his mother, he spent his early years trying to catch up!
Here's the irony of this progression of births. My daughter is the only one of these six collective offspring who is a) married and b) the mother of a daughter. This makes me, the "baby" of my family, the one and only grandparent. Isn't this strange? My brother is 62, my sister with kids is almost 60 and their children are 29, 28, 27, and 25. I'm the only Grandma! I realize that grandparents seem to be getting younger and younger but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would become a grandma at the tender age of 47. Obviously, Mother Nature does not always follow the rules when it comes to the natural order of things--the order in which I think they should be anyway.
3 comments:
Quite a progression of events. Forty-seven isn't young to be a grandma...one of my cousins became a grandmother at the ripe old age of 36! I am the baby of my family, too. I kind of wish I'd been in your boat...with several years of having my parents to myself. As it was, we five girls were only eight years apart. My every accomplishment---graduations, getting my driver's license, etc.--felt like a redundancy. Poor me, poor me!!! (LOL) Lisa :-]
The continuation. Isn't mother nature strange? I was the one in my family that seemd the least motherly, but here I am with three kids! My sister who is two yrs. younger than me will have her first in August. -Jan
My mother had me at fourteen--two days after she turned fourteen! My sister had a daughter at 17, so my mom was a grandma at 33. My niece just had her baby at the ripe old age of 24, so now my mom is a great grandmother at 57. My grandnephew has living great auntsanduncles, great grandparents, great great grandparents, and a great great great auntie. Us hilllbillies have them young. ROFL
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