I am here. I am safe. I am ALIVE!

At 7:38 last evening my first grandchild was born. In celebration, I’m lifting six short words from the lyrics of a song in the Christmas Cantata sung by our church choir back in December:

I am here. I am safe. I am ALIVE!       

Unsurprisingly, those words were written as an interpretation of the baby Jesus’s first cry after his birth. Less than twelve hours ago I heard my first child’s first child’s first cry, and that’s what little Jackson Robert said to his parents and grandparents in the first moments of his life. I am here. I am safe. I am alive.

It may have been his alert eyes that spoke to me as Jackson looked straight at my gray-bearded face when he was just minutes from his mother’s womb. It may have been when I ever so gently touched one of his ten fingers (You bet I counted every digit) as he waved his arms around. It may have been that first real cry, but like the lady in the movie said, “He had me at hello.”

Jackson Robert McBride is the new son of Todd and Maggie McBride, who are also our next door neighbors, so I expect there will be engagement with this baby, early and often.

Since this is my Civil War Novel blog, let me note that the new Jackson Robert McBride, born in 2015, is the third to bear that name in our branch of the family tree. Baby Jackson’s great-great grandfather, born in 1892 in Oakwood, Texas, and his father, born in 1858 in Lexington, Virginia, were both named Jackson Robert. That doesn’t make Baby Jackson eligible to put JRIII on the back of his sports jersey someday, since there is a three generation gap in the name, but I bet the two long-gone Jackson Robert’s are smiling in heaven anyway.

Baby Jackson’s great grandfather Frank McBride, son of the second Jackson Robert, is going to celebrate his 95^th birthday this year, so I hope Todd and Maggie will put their son in his great granddaddy’s arm’s and say, “Jackson, this is Frank. Live long like him. He still delivers Meals-on-Wheels to the old people.”

I’ll be going back to the hospital today, just so Nita and I can be near Jackson Robert, and so I can keep patting Todd on the back for a job well done, and kissing Maggie’s forehead for becoming part of our family and growing such a wonderful baby.  After all, the kid has already told his grandfather, “I am here. I am safe. I am ALIVE.”