Maddie safe in her father's arms
I’m feeling dizzy these days. My husband and I divide our time into seasons and spend winters and summers in Utah and springs and falls in Illinois. For the past three weeks, however, I’ve been in Boston. I just got back to Illinois last night and spent the morning at the temple for my Friday morning ordinance worker shift.
I can’t keep track of what state I’m in. The state of Utah? The state of Illinois? The state of Massachusetts? A state of confusion? A state of bliss?
All of the above.
As some of you may recall, last month I begged for your wisdom in “Pointers for Nana” as I got closer to the due date for my first grandbaby. Thanks for the deluge of good counsel. It has already come in handy.
Despite my daughter Britta’s confidence that her baby would arrive well before her due date of April 2nd, our beautiful Magdalena Chase Kimball Ingersoll (aka Maddie) took her exceedingly sweet time and arrived April 10th, just last Sunday. Everyone is healthy and beyond happy. And everything about this baby is exceedingly sweet. There is great rejoicing in the land!
It’s not just the time zone between Eastern and Central time that confuses me. It’s which generation am I in? The linear movement of time has morphed into something round and endless. I watched my daughter become a mother and had flashbacks to when I delivered her. (The resemblance between my daughter as a newborn and Maddie is astounding.) I kept thinking about my mother (who died in 1994) and about my being her daughter. I felt like all the women in my line back and back (and maybe forward) through time were there in the same place – the same state of bliss – welcoming Maddie with songs and blessings. And I, by proxy, got to cuddle and kiss her on behalf of them all.
No matter whether I was sorting onesies, providing compare-and-contrast samples of diaper wipes or reeling with the enormity of what my daughter has embarked on – what any mother embarks on – I was almost always red-eyed and verklempt. And inarticulate. That’s one reason why this month’s post is short.
At my temple shift this morning I had an assignment to participate in sealings. My first involvement was to act as a daughter to be sealed to her parents. In one of God’s amazing tender graces of synchronicity, the given names of the mother “I” was being sealed to was “Brita Magdl.” There I was, acting as a daughter being sealed to my “mother” Brita Magdl when the real me is the mother of Britta and grandmother to Magdelena.
God’s course, the scriptures tell us, is one eternal round. How can I not be a little dizzy with wonder and awe as I see Him at work in these miracles of life?
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