Bitten, Smitten and Blessed

Okay, I've been bitten. Or maybe smitten is the more correct word.

My husband and I took the plane trip to Victoria for six days last week to see our new baby granddaughter, a trip we greatly anticipated. How could we know, however, that our lives would actually change the moment we held her? That something deep inside would rise, unbidden, to claim her as ours to cherish and protect from that moment on? I was first to get her on my shoulder, to feel her soft weight against my neck and to drink in her baby smell. Her dark wisps of hair felt like silken embroidery floss, so soft to my touch that I felt, for the first time, that my hands were large and rough. Chelsea cuddled into my neck, her eyes closed and her breath a rhythmic lullaby.

When her grandfather held her sleeping body he, too, fell asleep and I have a wonderful picture of her tiny body cradled against his shoulder with his right hand, while he propped his own head up with his left, a contented smile on both their faces. Yes, he is in love. Proudly he struck out down the street with her stroller on our first walk together and I caught that moment as well.

Her parents were very good about letting the two of us hold Chelsea whenever we wanted, a circumstance we loved to exercise whenever we could. The six days went way too quickly and last Tuesday we flew away, not to see our darling until sometime in June. We were sad throughout that day, through two flights, three hours waiting in Calgary airport, and on the car trip home from London. We would like to be able to visit Chelsea whenever we want but it is not to be. We have to content ourselves with photos and Messenger visits. Our need to get videoconferencing set up on both ends is paramount. With all our modern technology we still feel the wound of separation. I don't even want to imagine what the first settlers to this country felt, knowing they would never, I mean NEVER, see their families again. We are blessed.