Fatherhood -- by Anne Shier

What would you say if as a mature woman, you were to find out that you were to become a grandmother imminently for the very first time?  That event happened to me, Suzanne.   As incredible as it seems, my son, Adam, and his girlfriend, Tammy, who had been staying with us for the past few weeks, were about to become parents - overnight!  I am ashamed to admit it, but I really did not see this particular event coming at all. 

In retrospect, I’m sure Tammy knew that she was pregnant, but was doing her level-best to hide that fact and succeeding admirably.  She’d wear these huge sweatshirts around the house - they were extremely bulky.  It was August when I’d see her wearing one of these sweatshirts and I would stare at her thinking that something fishy was definitely going on.  I had a passing suspicion – was she pregnant or just getting fat?  I quickly dismissed the pregnancy idea as being totally ridiculous.  How much longer did Tammy think she was going to fool anyone with that idea?

A few evenings later, I was home alone, listening to my favourite music on my computer.  Earlier, Tammy had complained of having had a bad stomach ache with intense cramps and, concerned, Adam took her to the hospital.  I was anxiously waiting to hear back from Adam about her condition.

When he finally called me back, the first thing he asked me, very tentatively, was, “Mom, how do you feel about being a grandmother?”  That was a very odd question coming from him.

Anyway, I replied, “Okay, but what does that have to do with what’s happening now with Tammy?”  I was truly baffled by his question.

Then, he said, without any further preamble, “Don’t freak out Mom, but Tammy is in labour.”

My heart starting thumping madly and I had to ask, “Are you sure?! Is the baby yours?”  I was numb with disbelief because I could not accept the fact that a young woman of 18 could be pregnant for nine full months and hide it even from her own boyfriend!  But, it was true.  I didn’t know whether to scream with delight or faint from complete shock.  In fact, I thought I might just have a major coronary.  I only knew one thing for sure – if Adam wanted this baby, then so did I.  I guess Tammy wouldn’t have known how anyone else would feel about the baby, so she couldn’t find it in herself to tell us about it. 

As a matter of fact, I wasn’t sure Tammy wanted it.  Maybe she wasn’t sure she wanted it – yet.  She and Adam hadn’t been together all that long – perhaps a year or so.  They were now having a son together and this was the first anyone had heard about it; even her own family didn’t know.  This was sure to shock them as much as it did me.  I wasn’t sure exactly how I felt about becoming a new grandmother virtually overnight.  It was something that would change my life forever.

It had all started several months ago before I knew that Adam was dating Tammy.  He never discussed his private life with me - no surprise.  Somehow, Adam didn’t strike me as a guy who wanted to settle down and have a family at this point in his life.  He was way too selfish, I thought.  But, when I met Tammy, I was impressed with her youthful beauty, her poise, and her seemingly mature attitude.  She had beautiful long, streaked-blonde hair, a womanly figure, and an outgoing personality.  Tammy seemed like a young woman that my son would fall hard for.  The trouble was that their feelings for each other weren’t obvious; they acted like good friends, which they certainly were.  Adam had lots of friends of both sexes, so this particular relationship did not surprise me at all.  He was popular with everyone because he had a charismatic air about him that made his peers gravitate toward him.  I’ve always felt that male-female friendships usually led to the best romantic relationships, but I guess that’s because I have always been an incurable romantic. 

However, an event that happened between Adam and Tammy four years after their son’s birth would prove to me, once and for all, that I was a hopeless romantic whose head had been in the sand way too long.  I sure didn’t know Tammy well enough, but now that she was the mother of my new grandson, I was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.  I decided that I would love her like my own daughter – the one I would never have otherwise.  Tammy was lovely and, if she and Adam wanted their baby son, I was determined to help them out as much as I could.  As it turned out, this decision was pivotal in helping them to decide what they wanted to do, as, they surely could not raise their baby son on their own.

The young family lived with me for another six months or so and we all bought baby stuff together for little Jimmy: diapers, wet-wipes, clothes, blankets and bedding.  We all took turns tending to his needs.  Little Jimmy slept beside Adam and Tammy’s bed in his baby basket in Adam’s very small bedroom.  Somehow, we all managed.  Friends of both Adam and Tammy dropped by to see the new arrival and share their best wishes with the young couple.  Adam, to my complete surprise, took to fatherhood like a duck takes to water.  He took to his fatherhood role so readily that I was again shocked, this time in a good way.

Eventually, they got an apartment together across the street from my apartment so that it would still be relatively easy for me to continue with babysitting and helping them out.  Everything seemed to be going so well and they seemed so happy together.  Then, a year later, they moved again, this time to North York.  That was some distance away from where I lived, which was on the eastern edge of Scarborough.  Things were going well and, gradually, I became less worried about the young family.

When Jimmy was just four years old, Tammy went back to work.  She got a full-time job as a sales girl at a store that sold sporting equipment.  She and Adam later bought a new home for themselves in Oshawa, about an hour outside of Toronto.  It wasn’t a brand new house, but it was new to them.  I was really happy for them.  They were really moving ahead well in their lives together.

Then, the unimaginable happened.  One day, Tammy came home from work and told Adam that she was leaving him.  “Why?!” he asked, aghast that she could do such a thing to their family. 

“Because I’ve met someone else and I’ve fallen for him.  I don’t love you anymore, Adam.   I’m sorry but that’s the way it is now.”

“But, what about Jimmy?"  Don’t you love him?!”  Adam angrily demanded.

“Yes, I do, but it’s been very hard being a new mom at age 18, giving up all my freedom for four straight years, with no end in sight.  My relationship with Dane is the only thing that’s been keeping me sane these days.  I’m so sorry, Adam.  I didn’t really want to hurt you and Jimmy, but you and I – we’re done.”

Adam, who felt he had no one else to confide in at that time, told me the bad news a week later.  I cried hard for him and Jimmy and tried equally hard to understand Tammy’s impulsive decision, but I was hurting too much to be able to do that yet.

This whole fiasco reminded me of how my own husband had ended our relationship, dumping me for another woman.  He’d said he was leaving me because he couldn’t handle being a new father, but I wasn’t sure that he was being truthful.  After all, no man leaves his wife unless he has another woman on the side.  I was later to discover that this was the case. 

No matter what the true reason, however, I was totally devastated for Adam and did not know what to say to him or how to comfort him.  Adam was my son.  He was literally my sun, my moon, and my reason for living.  Before Jimmy’s birth, we’d been a family, just the two of us, for almost twenty years.  Now, Jimmy was also part of my family and my reason for living.  I loved him just as much as I loved Adam.  If anything ever happened to either of them, my life, as I knew it, would be over.  It would be as if I’d just been told I had a terminal disease, with only a couple of months left to live.

How were we going to cope with this tragedy?  I had no idea, so I began to pray to my higher power to try and build my mental strength because I now had none.  Adam’s real-life nightmare was now mine.  Fortunately, Jimmy was still too young to understand.  His mother had explained to him, as best she could, that she had to leave him for a while.  She told him she loved him and always would.   Now, Adam would have to live as a single dad – something I would never have wished for him, ever.  I’d been a single mom myself since Adam was only a baby.  That was no way to raise a child because Jimmy, like Adam, was bound to develop lots of future emotional problems that he wouldn’t be able to deal with by himself.  I wanted a better life than that for little Jimmy.  Only God was going to have a hand in making that possible.  Devine intervention would be the only thing that would help any of us anymore, including Tammy.

I became a proud grandmother of my young grandson, Jimmy, whose future now looks very bright.  His parents finally managed somehow to put their personal differences aside and always put Jimmy first.  I am so thankful that they did that.  More surprising, they eventually became friends again even though their romantic relationship no longer existed.  I am happy that Jimmy has not suffered too much and that he and his dad, in particular, are close, and that we three continue to have a good relationship together.

copyright 2016 - Anne Shier - to be published in book format in the future (hard cover, soft cover, e-book / audio book)