This story is about how I became Mamo. It's about my first grandson. About the precious one who named me. My best little buddy.
This little guy was my world. When he was around, he was everything. He was a
pensive child. Quiet. Always listening. I read to him a lot and sang to him a lot, and I believed that I had his attention, but he was pretty quiet.
We had a little kitchen stool and I knew that he wanted to climb it, but I also knew clearly, even though he couldn't tell me, he didn't want me to watch him figure it out.
So I put the stool in the living room and walked away. In the kitchen, I could see him practicing from the opening over the sink. I watched him go up, stumble. and try it again. He did this over and over until he finally had it down. I saw that he had conquered it. My heart swelled with happiness, and I knew that he'd want to show me. I walked toward him. "Can you climb that ladder all by yourself?" I asked him. And he showed me that he could.
I gave him the biggest hug. He was so proud and so was I. And I was certain that he said, "Gamma" in the video I took of him doing it again. I was so excited that he'd said my name, that I showed it to my daughter when she came to pick him up.
Not long after that, I was talking to my daughter on the phone. "Jude keeps saying something," she told me. "I don't know what it means. He says it over and over every day." And she repeated the word. "Have you heard him say it?" She asked me?
"No." I told her, "I have not."
But the next time they came over this darling boy ran into the house. And as I knelt and held my arms open to him, he ran into them. "Mamo!" He said as I scooped him up.
"Oh my gosh!" my daughter said, "It's you. He's been asking about you."
The love I felt in that moment was coming from something very new to me. This little darling boy decided who I was in his life and named me. There was never any transition of his name for me after that. I wondered where it came from, and thought about it a lot. Then I figured it out and I just knew. Sometimes you just know that you know. His name for me was a combination of two of his favorite people. His Mama, and Elmo. I laughed out loud when I figured it out. I knew right away that he saw me as the perfect mix of both.
Part Mama, part Elmo, and deeply in love with him.
Many grandma's choose their name before their grandbabies are even born. They then coach them on it as soon as their grandbabies begin to form words. I know and love a KiKi, and a Glamma, and a Nana, and I get the idea. Truly I do, but I, I never even thought about it.
My truth was this...
I knew that one day Jude would call me something. He'd find his name for me and say it. And that's exactly what he did. In love and spontaneity, this darling boy filled my heart with a name that came from two of the things he loved the most. What could possibly be more precious than that?
And so...just call me Mamo!
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