This year, I will celebrate my best Mother’s Day ever, because six weeks ago I became a grandmother for the very first time. I got to share the news of her birth and my feelings about it, in an artistic way, with my participation in an exhibit at the Gainesville Fine Arts Association (GFAA).

GFAA and the Writers Alliance of Gainesville (WAG) recently collaborated on a joint exhibit, on display through May 23, where GFAA provided the art and WAG writers provided the words for the artist’s work. I was paired with artist Debra Lindberg, whose piece “Mystic Breathe” inspired me.

This was the third time our two organizations had worked together and the third time I had participated. Serendipitously, our writers’ deadline coincided with the birth of my granddaughter and, not surprisingly, that singular life event was what was on my mind.

Debra’s dreamscape captures my new reality as a first-time grandmother. It is something I have longed for and wanted for decades, but I always knew it was not up to me to decide. It is one thing to become a parent and choose to have a child if that is what you want. Grandparenting is different; it can be your hope and heartfelt desire to have a grandchild, but it is not your decision. That is something that is up to your son or daughter and their life partner. What you want does not enter the equation.

So, when my son got married a few years ago, I thought maybe, just maybe, he and his wife would make me a grandma or a nana or an abuela. I couldn’t say anything to them, of course. But I would dream.

There I was, eyes closed, thinking happy thoughts in a field of blue and green with butterflies meandering in and out of my field of vision but always calling out to me and reminding me to breathe, breathe in, breathe out. But breathe. I felt ethereal as I imagined life with a grandchild. But it was a thought that I kept to myself because I believed, then and now, grandparenthood was not up to me.

But as I dreamed, I imagined myself in this fairytale world where I was not the princess, but the granddaughter I longed for. She would be my special princess. As the mother of two sons, I longed for a little girl in my life. So, I would breathe in, breathe out, and think about my Princesa, who perhaps, if I were lucky, would one day enter my life. But again, I didn’t know if it would happen; I could only hope that it would.

And then, one day, it happened! I got the news I had longed for. We were at dinner in a Chinese restaurant when my son’s wife blurted out, “We’re pregnant!”

Now, in all fairness, I suspected something was up when I spotted prenatal vitamins in their kitchen when I was visiting them in Baltimore, where they live.

But I was not going to say anything! Not me!  I was not going to ruin years of discipline when I refrained from saying the killer phrase, “So, when are you going to make me a grandma?”

After all, the vitamins could have been for anything. But they were there for a reason.

I soon learned I was going to become a grandmother, and I went back to my butterfly-strewn blue and green landscape of thinking about the little girl who would soon enter my life.

Now she is here, and she is everything I dreamed she would be and more. Welcome to the world, Madelyn, my Chinese, Nicaraguan, Jewish, American girl. Every day now, I can watch you grow and become – sometimes from afar, sometimes right by your side.

The inner me feels like the star of the dreamscape my artistic partner created. And I am a grandma, finally!