Before "Grammy"

Before "Grammy," I was "mommy;" "Corey's Mom;" "Thomas' Mom." I loved them both more than I ever thought a human being was capable of loving. Though it's changed form throughout the years, that love has been, and, most of the time, continues to be, one of life's most beautiful and sweetest surprises.

Before "Grammy" and "mommy," I was (as all mommies everywhere, once upon a time, were) daughter, granddaughter, and, in my case anyway, lucky enough to be "sister" too. When I left home for the first time, a distance of only about three miles, (morphing as I went, from daughter, sister and granddaughter, into wife) it was into a little one bedroom apartment, off Winchester Blvd., in San Jose, California, where my first-born's father and I lived. A few years later, he and I made an even bigger move, all the way across town, off New Almaden Expressway, into a moderately large three bedroom house. That's where we lived when Corey was born.

Before Corey, (my first, much looked-forward-to, greatly enjoyed, and very easy, uncomplicated pregnancy and childbirth) my life and psyche had seemed simple, ordinary and relatively uneventful. From Corey onward, life, and I with it, seemed to become endlessly new, beautiful, full of meanings, truths and awakenings (in both the most exhilarating, as well as the most exhausting, senses of the word, "awakenings.") Corey's birth co-incided with Apollo's sucessful man-on-the-moon mission, the dawning of the "age of Acquarius," publication of the first "Whole Earth Catalogue," release of the film, "2001 Space Odyssey," Life magazine's first inta-uterine photos of a human foetus, and the ever-crescendoing cries and songs, of the 60's generation's finest hopes and howlings for a lasting, just peace, an end to world hunger and racism, an earthly environment -- air, water, soil -- free of contaminants, poisons and the debris of harmful human waste: A world filled with people who care about our earth-based home.

When I looked in my new baby daughter's eyes, and held her in my arms, sometimes dancing and singing with her in my arms, ("Hello hooray, let the show begin I'm ready...")* I knew she was already part of the fullfillment of those promises. Her birth was a catalyst that inspired me to hope, dream, pray for and participate in that great life adventure of doing what I believed I could do; a catalyst that would make the world as a whole at least a little better, both in the immediate present, as well as in the future. Not only for my own and my baby daughter's future, but for the future of all, for every single individual life.

"...For once in my life I have someone who needs me..." sang Stevie Wonder's words on the radio and though my mind. Before Corey, I had skirted the edges of the late 50s Santa Cruz surfing culture, had touched slightly the fringes of the west coast "beat" culture, and my office job, in the Santa Clara Valley, at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, had put me smack in the middle of the Appollo Mission's space culture. But none of it even came close to the joys, fears, expectations, hopes and wonders that came with motherhood. Corey's was a brand new life, a brand new beginning, a promise fulfilled, a committment and responsibility that surpassed, in depth and breadth, any I'd ever come close to knowing. Truth and beauty were with me every moment of every single day, and I wanted to know that the world, which I knew she'd one day be stepping into, would be as safe and true, beautiful and good as I could possibly make it. I wanted that for her and I wanted that for every other child too, because every other child and she would be companions in spirit, would be sharing and shaping this earth's brand new hopes and dreams together. All the children, co-existing, co-evolving, living life simultaneously, during the same era on this same earthship. Most of all, I believed that she and all the children on earth would eventually be creating the means to make this planet an even better place for themselves, for "Children of the Future,"** and for all the other multiplicities of life forms.

*Words from a Judy Collins song, "Hello Hooray"
**Words from Steve Miller Blues Band's "Children of the Future."

©Sharon K. Cook-Gordon-Spellman

Sharon K. Cook-Gordon-Spellman has been a year-round resident of the western slopes of the Sierra foothills, near Nevada City, California, since 1972. She will be writing a monthly column for the BBFN newsletter about the joys, trials and tribulations involved with being a grandmother of three bilingual children.

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