My adult kid and I were walking along in the Zoo in the early evening, with the grandson and his dad strolling along ahead of us. We were discussing the grandchild, who will be six the end of January. He is doing well in school, because he is a thoroughly competent young person.

“Even though he was born 6 1/2 weeks early,” said my kid.

“5 weeks early,” I corrected, and they agreed. I said, “I remember how relieved I was that he made some noise when he was born.”

I was with my kid when the grandchild was born, you see. My kid had taken the city bus to the hospital, not really thinking they were actually in labor, and they called me when I was in my car going to work. I did a U-turn on the Girard Avenue Bridge, even though they said I didn’t have to come.

He didn’t come out wailing conventionally, because his lungs didn’t work very well, but he did manage to push out one loud noise of protest. I exclaimed “He’s crying!” at the time and the nurse gave me a quelling look, because she didn’t want me to get my hopes up.

My kid said now, “Yeah, he gave one cry. He sounded like you did when you imitated the noise of raccoons fucking. I remember thinking that at the time, that sounds just like Mom imitating the raccoon.”

I snickered. “I don’t believe I managed to shock you when I did that.” I don’t remember the reason we were discussing raccoons in the car when my kid was a teenager, but both of us remember how astonished they were that I could make that joke.

The small room where he was born was covered with blood, I remember. Nobody at the hospital believed my kid when they said the baby was coming now, which was pretty much the same experience I had when my own baby was born. Also, just as with me, the placenta wouldn’t come out afterwards, so they took the baby to the NICU and my kid to the operating room.

It worked out just right that he came early, though. My kid took him home from the NICU just before a pandemic shut the world down. We formed a little pod, just us four, and I took him two days a week until he was ready for preschool. My husband got cancer, and died. I quit my job and retired for good. Everything changed.

All this is to say I was hanging out with my kid the other day at their house, when his school called to say the grandchild was having some ear pain and they were sending him home. I volunteered to pick him up. The grandchild was not startled to see me at school, because I am often there. We walked to his house. Whenever we crossed a street, I would put out my hand, without looking, and a very small, light hand would nestle confidently in mine until we were across, and then let go, with no emphasis.

He paused to stare into a reflection in a puddle. “I can see the sky, the clouds, and the trees,” he said, and I looked down at the back of his head.

I got him back to the house, and while my kid was talking and going in and out of the room, he climbed onto the sofa next to me. He leaned wearily against my side. I almost didn’t dare breathe. That small, tired person was leaning against me as if I was his grandmother. As if he was alive.

I walked home afterwards thinking about the grandmothers I know who want their grandkids to fuss over them. I don’t want fuss. I just want to be taken for granted. I want him to think my hand will be there whenever we cross the street, and then that it will not be needed after we are across. I want him to sit down every once in a while and lean against me, still alive, both of us.