18 Jan 2016

Ella

My great-granddaughter waking from a sleepover with her grandmother Chloƫ.

She is not going short of family this child. She has two grandmothers, one step-
grandmother, two grandfathers, two great-grandmothers, two great grandfathers…….! Just imagine all those birthday presents and (all those thank you letters.)

I wrote a poem soon after she was born. It says more about my feelings than about Ella of course, but she won't mind.

Ella Louise.

Warm, soft-scented, fragile,
helpless.
Ella.

A new sound to vibrate through our family rooms.
A new shape and colour to our lives.
A necessary shuffling of labels, 
an adjustment of status to accommodate her.
Child to parent,
parent to grandparent.
Grand-parents spun still further 
to the outer rim of the Wheel.
The greatest transition.
The most meaningful rite.

Birth.

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