by Belinda Howell

Created on: October 05, 2009   Last Updated: October 06, 2009

Being grandmother to a delightful child was the most important role of my life. She was born in a birthing center in a huge antique bed, while I offered words of love and encouragement to her then-teenaged mother. The first year of her life was spent in my home because her mother had no spouse, less than a year of college, and no idea what direction she should take to become financially independent.

Now, five years since my granddaughter's birth, I am denied access. The choice my daughter made to have a same-sex partner, then a marriage to that partner, were not an issue for me - so long as long as my granddaughter is loved and honored, I believed. But, when the announcement came that a new baby was due and my granddaughter was taught that the baby "might be a girl with a penis or a boy with a vagina", I dissented, citing my professional and personal experiences as support for waiting until she was more developed to discuss confusing and rare gender issues.

As I write this article, it has been eight months since I have been allowed to see my granddaughter. Each day there is a sensation of a new wound, as the realization comes that her precious smile and bubbly personality will not be a part of another day and that there is no "closure". There is only waiting. Dreadful, painful waiting for young adults to become mature and to overcome their own patterns of self-indulgence.

In the meantime, I add constantly to a box that will someday be in my granddaughter's hands. She will find photos of her grandmother and herself, souvenirs and articles that tell her what mattered to her grandmother, toys, games, and puzzles that we enjoyed together in her first four years of life, and treasured artwork from her tiny hands as she first learned to draw letters, animals and faces. Most importantly, she will have letters written almost daily throughout the rest of her grandmother's life - letters that tell her how much she is loved, how special and bright a child she was, and how painful the separation is and will always be. She will learn from these letters that her grandmother loves her more than life itself and that she, herself, is not at fault; the separation was the result of adult differences, and not caused by anything she did or did not do.

Litigation has its place and it may come to that, but patience may reap richer rewards in the long run. Where a child is involved, no river is too wide to cross.

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