My mother was 74 when my only child Bridget was born. She was 49 when she first became a grandmother, quite affronted by the prospect of another generation when she still had kids at home and felt far too young, thank you very much. Some 25 years later when I gave birth to the last of her 13 grandchildren, she told me she finally felt like she’d aged into the monicker. The 70s, she said, seemed like a good grandparently decade.

I’ve had reason to think of those words often, and take perhaps unreasonable heart at their hopeful prophetic nature, because on May 7, Bridget gave birth to her first child, little Flynn. And in the time since, I’ve been feeling a swirl of emotions – not least of which is contemplating this new place in the messy, glorious McDermott clan that my mother and father created.

 I remember when my now-17-year-old grand-niece was 3 or 4, sitting on the floor and reading books with her one day. Bridget, then in her early 20s, looked at us and said, ‘You’re wanting one of your own, aren’t you?’ You betcha, I said. It took another decade and more, a time in which grand nieces and nephews popped up in seeming profusion, but here Flynn is. And here I am at 72.

Of course, it’s all old-hat now, additions to this family. My niece Christine, that first grandchild, is mother to men in their late 20s. My nephew Ryan is father to a 2-year-old. We were 35 for dinner last Christmas, when I came to Maine from Ireland and Bridget, fairly newly pregnant, and Tom traveled from Rwanda. And that wasn’t even all of us! But here’s the thing. In a family with a fourth generation in the offing not too many years from now (Christine’s younger son is engaged), I’m wearing a brand spanking new hat. And it feels odd and wonderful and a bit intimidating.

What role is this elder woman to play in Flynn’s life? I ponder this now. A boy child is, to be honest, outside of my comfort zone, accustomed as I am with raising a girl and being most at home in the company of women. But Flynn says with his presence, ‘Come grow with me,’ and so I shall.

This is a child who has been dressed in mauve and rainbows, as well as grays, greens, yellows and the obligatory blue. Bridget and Tom want to ensure that this child will be given the opportunity to become the person he or they is meant to be, and that includes not being bound to blue and all it entails. I celebrate this. I feel fortunate that in this grandparently decade of mine, I continue to meet everybody where they are, and strive to hold as sacred the widest of possibilities for each person. I am not my mother’s 72, not my grandmother’s 72; and while I appreciate that each of these women were products of their age and place, I feel eternally grateful that I came from the Age of Aquarius. This simple accident of birth has shaped me in so many profound ways over the course of my lifetime. Justice. Peace. Tolerance. (A certain proclivity to the occasional outrageous.) These are my bedrock values, ones further honed by the precepts of the Unitarian Universalist church I have called my spiritual home for more than 30 years.

I have many faults – the flares of temper from my father the snippiness of my mother just for starters. But I was also born with a fair amount of Irish craic — and that combined with my view of life has generally held me in good stead. So I too look forward to this little one exploring life in the fullest and most unfettered way. Maybe I have some wisdom to impart, now that I am an elder, as they navigates their young life. Goodness knows, I just now begin to feel like a wise woman. And maybe if they’re lucky I’ll tell them about that Vietnam protest or the time I joined the National Organization for Women or, if they’re really lucky, the pot-induced haze of that Grateful Dead concert…

Bridget, Tom and Flynn will be moving to Nairobi, Kenya in September – hardly down the street from me. In this, I differ from my siblings, who have always had children close by. I try to be philosophical about this, sometimes more successfully than others. But it has always been thus with B. Before she even graduated from college, she had already lived in Tanzania, and has since spent time in Malawi, Syria, South Sudan, Rwanda, to name a pertinent few. Tom has lived in most of those and other perilous places. Both work for nongovernmental organizations, and this life as world citizens is not likely to change any time soon. So I will have to dig a little deeper, be a little more inventive, tap that inner child a little more often – in short, be a little more memorable when I do see Flynn. In this, too, he invites me to grow with him. And I relish this chance he’s given me.

One final thought. You can’t believe that human beings are made that small. Of all the everyday miracles we all experience, surely this is one of the greatest. How tiny this little child was when he began life on this side of the womb. How soft his skin, how downy his hair. His little body fits just so on my daughter, my son-in-law, me. And yet, already more than a month old, he holds his head well, he engages with his eyes. I hold my breath, and he will change. Hold it once more, and he will change again. I could say I wish I were younger. Yet Bridget would not have been possible a moment earlier in my life. I could say I wish I were younger. But I am exactly the right age, and this is exactly the right time, and he is exactly the child of my dreams.