Three weeks ago I met for the first time my grandaughter, Liva. At eight months old, she arrived here in Maine from her home city of Copenhagen, Denmark where she lives with her mother. I had seen only pictures of her before that day, and to see her in person was akin to meeting a beloved celebrity in the flesh. She is beautiful and smart and full of exhausting amounts of energy, so uninterested in sleep that I worried at first that she was going to grow up to be like that scary sleepless girl in "The Ring." But, no, she is just a lovely, wild baby girl. One who will, on Sunday, return to Denmark with her mother, and this time, with her father as well. My son is going there to live again, in the hope that living there instead of finishing school here will save his relationship with bLiva's mother. i hope that happens as well. But as happy as I am that my son's little family will be together now, my heart aches to think that I will say good bye forever to Liva on Sunday. Yes, I know that I will see her again, supposedly next Christmas. But she will be a different person then, a toddler, and she won't even remember me. The baby that I have been holding and loving to death these past three weeks will never come back to me. I will never hold her tiny, perfect, constantly grasping hands in mine again. Never squeeze her little beanbag form again, never say hi to her only to have her respond by biting my nose, never see her at the same size and shape again. I will be saying good-bye to her forever. I want to cry.
