Carol’s Column

Well hello, Maya, it's nice to know you're here at last

Just call me Whistler's Grandmother. In case you don't know, Whistler, the famous American artist, painted a picture of his grandmother sitting in a rocking chair and called it Whistler's Grandmother. What else?

On Monday night, my eldest and only married son and his wife Melissa gave birth to a piano-playing ballerina who is as sweet as a ripe plum. Her name? Maya Ilana after my late father Ivor Maurice, because that is a Jewish tradition.

“Ma, Ma, she's a baby!” said my son. He was excited. “She looks like a little plum with a shock of black hair and long eyelashes. But she hasn't got a nose,” he added. “We can't find the nose.”

“We have a baby,” I shrieked to my husband. Then to Barry: “Of course she has a nose, you're not looking properly.”

There was silence at the other end of the phone. “Okay, we've found the nose. She has a small, perfect little nose just like Melissa!” he exclaimed.

My son was phoning from a hospital in the town of Buffalo in New York State, USA, on the border of Canada.

When we'd all calmed down, we demanded a blow-by-blow account of Maya's birth.

“Ma, it was remarkable,” said Barry. “First out popped the tiny head, then one arm and then the most amazing thing happened...”

“What, what?” I gasped.

“She slipped out of the doctor's hands, ran to the bathroom and locked the door.”

“You're joking!” I said.

“No. When we banged on the door she said: Hang on, hang on, I'm doing my hair!”

Needless to say he was joking. And naturally, listening to my ecstatic son, it's obvious he and Melissa are the first young couple in the world to create a baby. In a flash, our family's dynamics have changed.

My mother, formerly Ouma, is now a great-grandmother which pleases her greatly. “When Maya comes to visit, I'll take her for a ride on the back of a Harley Davidson,” she exclaimed. Uncle Jamie phoned from London. “Hello Ouma,” he said.

“No, it's not Ouma, it's Ma,” I replied.

“Ma, you're Ouma,” he said in single syllables. He's right.

“I heard the baby crying over the phone,” he added.

“How did she sound?”

“Like a baby,” he laughed.

Uncle Ralph in the Seychelles caught a marlin and named it Maya and Aunty Nicky told me the following: “There's a story that while a baby is growing, an angel sits on its shoulder telling him or her all about the world. The secrets, the mysteries, the wonderful things. In fact everything a baby should know.

“Then,” added my daughter, “as the baby is born, the angel touches it on the lip and everything is forgotten as learning is a joy, and the baby has a lifetime to learn again. That's why babies are born with a small indentation on their lips. It's the touch of an angel.”

Meanwhile, a firsthand source – Barry actually – tells me Maya is very long. Nineteen inches long. Backward in some things, the Americans have not yet metricated.

Which means that when Maya graduates as a marine zoologist she'll probably be the tallest young lady getting capped.

“I hope the prof who caps her is tall enough to do it properly,” I mused to my husband.

“I wouldn't worry too much,” he murmured. “She can wear flat shoes.”

Meanwhile I'm getting into grandmotherhood mode. I'm going to give up gym, stop drinking red wine and buy a rocking chair.

Hello Oumas, wherever you are. Here I am, the newest member of this very exclusive club.

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