People like to say, “I bet your mom is so excited to be a grandmother. What did she do when she found out you were having a baby?”

“Oh. She immediately put her house on the market.”

And they laugh. They laugh and laugh. “That would be so funny,” they chuckle.

I don’t say anything. I don’t have to. You can see it in my face, my tired eyes, my worried hair.

Their laughter fades away. They whisper, “Oh, you weren’t kidding.”

“No.”

“Your mom…”

“Sold her house.”

“WHEN?”

“Recently.”

“And she’s moving…”

“Here.”

“WHEN?”

“Soon.”

“And you…?”

“I’m trying not to freak out about it.”

“Will she be… HERE-here?”

“No, she’ll be just over there. But pretty close to here. Here-adjacent. Here enough.”

Then it’s quiet for a little while, until that person says, “At least you have your next sitcom.”

So for those of you worried this was going to turn into a Mommy Blog, you can find some kind of comfort that the Mommy in discussion will most likely be mine. Because she’s coming. Here. My mother has sold her house and is currently filling her gas tank to drive across the country to my living room to hold my baby because GRANDMOTHERS CANNOT BE STOPPED.

She didn’t send a onesie. She didn’t stop by for a week to cook and do laundry. She

SOLD
HER
HOUSE.

The baby hadn’t even been born yet when she said — and even though you are going to read these quotation marks I still feel compelled to add the words and I quote here — “I will be there whenever you have to work because I don’t want my baby in some daycare.”

“…Your baby?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, Mom. I’m afraid I do.”

A sidenote here about the baby’s name. We were often asked what the baby’s name was going to be. Some people would turn angry when we told them we weren’t sure. We had a list. For those who needed something to call the baby, we gave them “Qwerty.” It’s cute, it sounded like we might mean it, and for just a second — if you don’t see it written down — it sounds like a real name. This baby has been called Qwerty by lots of friends and loved ones long before it was born, so that’s the name I’m going to use here on pamie.com, on Twitter and Facebook, etc. I haven’t shared the sex of the baby yet, and I suppose the longer I write about having a baby, the harder it will be to write in a way that sounds natural without using proper pronouns, but for now it’s just a baby named Qwerty, who is having a nap, unaware that with every passing minute GRAMMA GROWS CLOSER.

I haven’t spent this much time with my mother since I was a little girl. Mom worked night shift when I was in high school. I moved out for college and never came back. I never finished the Mother on the Orient Express stories, but what you don’t know is that after ten uninterrupted days together, my mother and I didn’t speak for three weeks. Paris broke us. And yes, now we look back on that trip as nothing but good times, but we had some moments there where one of us was going to kill the other one. And hide the body in the Catacombs.

For almost twenty years my mother’s always been somewhere between 140 and 3000 miles away and now she’s going to be just… over there. And by that I mean on the other couch. Holding my/her baby.

I am sure this news comes as a complete delight to the bulk of you and I’m relieved the things that happen to me continue to amuse countless strangers. I’ll do my best to keep you entertained as I slowly but surely lose control of every remaining minute of my life.