Someday, when he's old enough to take an interest in anything beyond filling his belly, I'll tell him the story of his birth.
It's a good story. He will like it. As with all good stories, it has various versions, depending on the teller, and every version, no doubt, has its own merits.
But this is the only one that I can tell him, the only one I know. I'm his grandmother. It's my story. And I've been waiting all my life to tell it.
I'll start with the phone call.
Eight days before he was due, I was staring at an empty suitcase (one I'd been meaning for weeks to pack, just in case) wondering what exactly would I do if I got a call saying it was time.
That's when the phone rang.
"Hey, Mom," said the boy, the man I call my baby. "We don't want to worry you, but ..."
There were "complications," he said, nothing definite, but there was a chance "things" could get started the next day.
The next day? It was too late to book a flight. Quickly, I did the math. If a woman of a certain age drove a 10-year-old car 500 miles from Las Vegas to Monterey, Calif., at a speed roughly equivalent to that of a bat out of hell, she could arrive -- traffic permitting and the good Lord willing -- in nine hours, give or take.
Never mind that she had no clean underwear or needed to wash her ratty hair or was on deadline to write a column.
When a baby decides it's time to enter the world, heaven and earth get out of his way.
I called my husband at work.
"Be safe," he said.
And soon I was on the road singing an old Sam and Dave song I used to dance to back in the day: "Hold on, I'm coming."
Four hours later, at midnight, when I checked into a motel in Tehachapi, Calif., I saw the desk clerk glance at my hair.
"I'm on my way to meet my first grandchild," I said.
"Oh," she said, smiling, "Congratulations!"
I said it again the next morning to a maid in the hall, to the checker where I bought coffee and to a man at the pump where I gassed up my car. And they all said "Congratulations!" as if we were in it together, as if the baby I was soon to meet was somehow their baby, too.
Then I got back on the road, driving and humming and eating the pastries I'd bought to take to the new parents. Five hours later, I skidded sideways into the hospital parking lot.
My boy is big. When he hugs you, you know you've been hugged. His wife is beautiful, even when she's in labor.
There are times when even a mother has to admit there's nothing that she can do. So I said a silent prayer, left them to their task and went out to join the others -- her parents, her sister, my daughter -- a small, but devoted cheering section.
We waited. And waited.
Finally, mercifully, when a nurse announced that the baby had arrived, we clapped and hugged and laughed and cried as if the Giants had just beaten the Dodgers to win the Series.
There's nothing like a baby to forge a bond between families.
We took turns holding him, marveling at his perfection, attributing his features (he has his mother's skin, his father's hair, his maternal grandfather's nose and possibly my toes).
"Hey, Randy," I whispered, as he wrapped his starfish fingers around my thumb and my heart. He was named for his granddad, my late husband, and somehow, I realized, the name fit.
It's hard to say which affected me more: Feeling the weight of his body (7 pounds, 1 ounce) in my hands or seeing my boy so overjoyed to be his dad. But I doubt I will ever be the same.
This story doesn't have an end. It's only a beginning. I'll tell it to the boy someday. For now, I am happy just to watch him sleep.
Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077, or at www.sharonrandall.com.