My daughter Emma called me tonight, and we rushed to pick up the phone, thinking it might be the call. Not yet, but there was news. She’s somewhat overdue and if the baby is not born by the end of the week, the doctors will induce labor. Emma and baby are fine, but they don’t like to wait too long.

Gulp, somehow, and especially with all the activity surrounding Maria’s trip to India, I didn’t feel it was imminent. It is, I better get my head organized around it.

I wasn’t quite prepared for this, it means I will be a grandfather by the weekend. It is no longer an abstract idea, but a very real and imminent happening, a new chapter, for sure. Lots of people are asking me how I feel about having a granddaughter, about being a grandfather. Maria asked me after I got off the phone.

I don’t know, I don’t think I want to know yet, I think I want to wait and see how it feels, rather than being told how it will feel or trying to guess. I don’t know, that’s the truth. This is new.

I told Maria I had go write about it to figure out how I feel, so here I am.

I do know some things.

I am very happy for Emma. She is building a good life for herself – love, work, friendship, community – and I think she will be a fine mother. I think having a daughter will open her up and bring her to a new and very powerful dimension of her life, it will be even more rich and grounded than it is now.

And I feel this is already bringing us closer. Em and I had some challenging times after my divorce in 2008, it shocked and upset her, as is to be expected. All of that is gone, I feel a very strong and open connection to her now. This is already bringing us closer, and that is a great gift to me.

Emma and her husband Jay share their lives and responsibilities, and she will neither be alone in this, nor will she be married to a partner who won’t want to do his share. All good.  She is surrounded by close and wonderful friends. Her mother and she are close, and Paula lives nearby. She will have plenty of support, I am sorry I can’t provide more.

Emma is already on leave from her job at Sports Illustrated, she and Jay are ready, I remember the strange period when we were waiting to have her, it felt like floating in space, we were between things.

Being a planner, which I am not, Emma was calling to prepare me to get ready. I wouldn’t go down to New York right away, she and Jay will need some time to adjust to this new reality, I might just go down to say hello to my granddaughter and daughter – that sounds wild – and then return for a slightly longer stay.

I am excited, just not prepared to turn myself over to it. Lots of people assure me that I will be bowled over by this, but the truth is I don’t get bowled over by things any more than Emma does. She is quite level-headed about it all.

If I develop a powerful connection with this new person in my world, it will happen holistically and over time. I know myself, and I don’t generally get blown away by things. Many people have told me this will alter my life, but I tend to resist that, either because I don’t like to be told what I will feel, or because it unnerves me. I like my life, I don’t want it altered or upended.

Emma and I live very different lives in very different places and I don’t believe my life will be dramatically altered or that she will be my sun and my moon. If that happens, that will be great. It’s just not really the way I am built, too wary, I guess and live too much in my head. But I won’t know how I feel until I see my granddaughter a few times and get to know her a bit, then I will open up to it, I imagine. I think I just spent too many years being careful.

I very much want Maria to be as much a part of this as she wishes to be, I imagine it will be an odd situation for her in some ways. We are very strong together and I always appreciate and love her presence in my life. I supposed my complex childhood will come into play here.

I saw so much damage done to children in my family that there is something frightening to me about parenting a new child, something embedded in my consciousness, not something that is rational or justified here. It is too easy to mess up a kid. So I will work to remember that my life is my life, it is not anybody else’s life.

And it is surely not my business. I have learned a lot about boundaries, they are my friend, always. This is Emma’s life, it is not mine.

I will work to be open to this remarkable new experience, and allow it to reveal itself to me. I’ve never done this before, and have few  pre-conceptions about it in my head. I hope to feel it, not plan it. Emma says I am great with children, and that is not something I ever heard from her before. I hope it is true.

So the time has come. One of these days soon, I will be on the train to New York City to meet this person I imagine will open my heart up a bit. My daughter’s daughter. Wow.

I hope she comes to visit the farm soon and see the animals. I think it is a great place for a kid. I hope she comes soon before I am too old to run her around and do chores with her. I hope she’ll have the chance to get to know me a bit. We will not be deeply entwined in each other’s lives, not for too long.

I will be 80 when she is eleven.

Perhaps she’ll want to work with the dogs herding sheep.

Emma never much connected to my life up here, although she appreciates it intellectually and wants me to be happy.

I believe she wants her  daughter to love it up here, even if she didn’t And then there is my life with Maria. Having fun with my granddaughter could be yet another wonderful thing we learn to share together. There is no one with a bigger heart.