A Mother’s Day message: Be fruitful and kvell, as a new grandmother counts her blessings

At 10 p.m. on a Thursday evening in April, the contractions began. The due date wasn’t for another two weeks, and mom-in-waiting’s check-up the day before showed no signs of a baby ready to make an appearance.

At dawn on Friday, the grandmother-to-be learned she had slept through the first eight hours of labor and her first grandchild was about to be born 100 miles away. She jumped into her Honda and drove the entire length of the Long Island Expressway like a State Trooper in hot pursuit.

Labor being what it is, she arrived in New York in time to find a parking spot that would be legal under alternate-side-of-the-street parking regulations until 11:30 a.m. the following Tuesday. This was a miracle as stupendous as the birth itself, which had still not happened.

Hours later, the moment granny dreamed of came at last. When she held her new baby, grandma was well-rested, her hair was combed, and she had not endured a bit of discomfort. Her son and daughter-in-law were less composed, but just as joyful.

Dear Reader: I am that grandmother, and I’m here to declare on Mother’s Day 2025 that the best way to have a baby, is to be its grandmother.

There was a time when a woman making the transition to grandmother winced when someone called her attention to it, because it made her feel old. That’s so last century. Nowadays, grannies are leaning into it. I feel like I just had a baby; like I’m 35 looking forward to every minute of watching this child grow up.

Being a mother is wonderful, but it’s also hard. A few days after welcoming my granddaughter, I had the chance to ask a local mother with a newborn what she thinks of motherhood.

Darlin P. is a mother of three who works on Shelter Island and lives about an hour away on Long Island. Her youngest, Leonardo, is just five months old, and his older sisters are 10 and 15.

“The best thing about being a mother is, you are in love,” Darlin said. “The hardest thing is that you take care of them, and they cry, but you don’t know what they need. Leonardo was born 10 years after my middle child. It was like starting again. I wanted my mother.”

Darlin’s first child was born in Honduras, where mothers stayed at home and did all the childcare and housework, and fathers went to work. When she moved to Long Island, the responsibilities for raising the children shifted with the American expectation that mothers and fathers share the work of child rearing.

“Here, everything changed,” she said. “He has to clean, and I have to clean. He takes care of the baby, and I take care of the baby. Everything is shared. Here I have to work and take care of the baby too, but I still think it’s better.”

Grandmothers are like high-priced consultants; we can pick and choose our roles.  When I was a beginning mother, one of my sons had a high-pitched vibrato cry when he really got going, like a tortured yodeler. Our pediatrician assured me that my child was just exercising his lungs, but I imagined anyone listening would want to call the police, and there I was, holding the victim.

I remember my mother once handing him to me and saying, “I’m sorry, but there is nothing I can do here.” As a grandmother, you are allowed to move into the next room when the screaming starts to shatter glass.

Likewise, the dreaded nighttime feedings, which are purely voluntary acts of heroism on the part of a grandparent. Getting out of bed at odd hours two days in a row to feed and comfort a hungry infant qualifies a grandmother as a medal contender in an Olympic event called the IronGran Competition.

“Kvell” is a Yiddish word that means to gush or swell with pride and pleasure, especially over a child. I think the best thing about being a mother or a grandmother is the kvelling. When I saw my grown son, holding his newborn with tender protectiveness, I kvelled because of how far he’s come from the 8-year-old, who lost track of his own brother in a tent during a family camping trip. (He was later found in his sleeping bag.)

When Darlin told me how proud she is of her 15-year-old, who is loving and grounded, smart as they come, and already planning to go to medical school, she was kvelling. And whether or not I’m lucky enough to be with my children on Mother’s Day, you can be sure I will be in full kvell.