Layla

Last spring, two of my four daughters gave birth to two of their own daughters, two months apart.
Lily was born in March, she'll celebrate her first birthday on Wednesday. Layla was born on May 19, leaving this young and inexperienced grandmother with a couple of months to save her pennies for gifts that will still matter because of what they are. Ahhh sweet innocence.
I was personally thrilled when I found out that I had not one but TWO new little girls to spoil.

Perhaps, in one case I was just a bit more thrilled than I had a right to be. However, when I think of the night (well, morning) that my youngest daughter, (and newest mother--of a daughter), strolled in at FIVE AM and informed the STATE Police who just happened to be sitting at my kitchen table, where they'd been sitting and consuming all of my Kopi Luwak since about 10 pm the night before (when we discovered that the two little charmers were gone), that, at age THIRTEEN, they'd stayed out "on the beach, jeez, (as if to say, "like, are we under penalty of DEATH this time or WHAT, MOTHER?!?") just talking!"                                                                                           

The beach, yes, a beautiful California beach, upon which she and her little girl friends fried themselves after school daily, in a place, I might add, where daily and sun equal 365 days. A gorgeous beach that was across the backyard from this deprived adolescents home, and directly onshore of part of the surfers 'pipeline' known around the world as Maverick's, a beach to which surfers from Hawaii to The Cook Islands round to Thailand, South Carolina's Outer Banks to the Italian Riviera and New Zealand and Australia to Panama swarm once every year, and stick around for a week long party following the awarding of the purse, I might also add!

So, I suppose that on the afternoon of Layla's birth, one might understand just why I was humming "Instant Karma" to myself as I was on my way out the hospital's front door, to use my cell to call all of the older "jews on your (that would be my) side of the family" (they have a timeworn tendency to overreact). 
Family members whom it was '"Absolutely imperitive, do you hear me, Mother?" (Cursed hormones, I couldn't even blame her!) to keep away from the hospital, preferably not tell the name of the hospital to, until the child had been around for a while, like maybe after they were discharged.
Both of my granddaughters are of course, gorgeous (as are their Mothers).
However, one of them has some serious character going on.
She's very pretty, she's already killing the crowd with her silent stand up, and she makes these faces. She's always busy, she's always listening, and she's ALWAYS got something to say to all of us. I know, I'm her Grandmother!
I know, I know, I'm her grandmother, so who am I to say a word? I'd be certifiable, as are many of my friends, if I didn't know that one does not show pictures unless asked, one does not meet friends she hasn't seen in years, only to monopolize the entire lunch conversation with her grandchild's utter magnificence. This I DO know.
So, I ask you, what am I supposed to do?
I mean look at this kid! She's a riot, what a face, she's Shecky Greene when he was a baby; she's confused, she's misunderstood, she's laughing at all of us, and wow, that canary was delicious!

She has certainly got the power to contain a room already, something that I know from having tried myself, is a gift of timing that comes only from on high. Which would make it congenital, something that we have at birth, and cannot be purchased anywhere in Bloomingdales, not even in their secret VIP room behind stationary.

Layla is positive confirmation of all of this, if I ever dared question it in the first place.

So, since she was born and the ears blossomed and the crooked bedimpled smile began to show itself; along with her ability to be both a drop dead gorgeous doe eyed beauty AND a crooked bedimpled smiling character within the same 15 minute period.

It's just a crime to ignore that, one punishable I hear by living in eternity with one's most obnoxious friends and feared relitives. There are no corners in hell, I'm told, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Eternity, and since that doesn't work for me, I will ask you one more time, what am I going to DO with this kid?? 

Every time I see a new picture of this child I just think, okay, what am I gonna do with this? What would Mama do with this? I confess that these sessions have been known to end with me looking at the ceiling, sky, roof of my car, and screaming,
"DAMNIT MA! SEE? SEE? I WASN'T KIDDING WHEN I TOLD ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS AT THAT LUNCHEON THAT YOU WERE NEVER THERE FOR ME WHEN I NEEDED YOU! I TOOK THE SLAP LIKE A WOMAN, AND I LISTENED TO YOU LAMENT YOUR GRIEVOUS LACK OF APPRECIATION BECAUSE YOU WERE ALWAYS, "'ALWAYS, RIGHT BOB?, ALWAYS THERE"'. OH, I LISTENED ALL THE WAY HOME FROM LONGSHORE, IS WHAT I DID; .AND SO, AND SO WHERE ARE YOU NOW?, YEAH,WHERE? OH RIGHT, NOW YOU'RE DEAD! WHY ARE YOU DEAD WHEN I NEED YOU MORE THAN EVER? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS JEWEL THAT SOMEONE CLEARLY TWISTED GOD'S ARM TO GET, SO NOW TELL ME, WHAT?"
In all fairness, I too, am currently suffering at the behest of the Gods of Hormone depletion, however, make no mistake as from what I've seen of the side effects of Testosterone Poinsoning I'd rather be screaming at a dead woman!
In my thirties, my then husband gifted me with session time with a good portfolio photographer, for one particularly depressing birthday. It was a valiant effort (simply because of it's potent ability to go oh so very wrong), so I went along with it. Feeling, since my mother had never let an opportunity slip when she could remind me how sadly UNphotogenic I was, that if someone like this man could make me look good, I might at least be able to get my wedding pictures re-done.
I ended up finding out, once again, just how misguided my mother's vision (I was beginning to think that this was more literal than figurative) was, when an agent by the name of David Powers in Manhattan (now, of COURSE, in Los Angeles) picked me up, had my portfolio redone for free, and sent me on many, many "no time to take a shower before you go", job calls from Southbury CT to Manhatten, Brooklyn, or worse, Queens.
Had I been realistically able to uproot my 7 member clan, complete with adolescents (which was what made it virtually impossible, lest we'd left them by the side of the road in Connecticut, and I won't lie, I did consider it!) to a loft in the village, I might now be someone other than who I am, which is, after all what I'm meant to be, Layla's pushy stage Grandmother.
Needless to say, I quit, I was exhausted, at times I regret it, most days I just roll over and go back to sleep, on good days I sit up and write.
On the other hand David (Powers, the agent) did manage to send me on more than a couple of successful calls, and I did make some money from that long ago birthday gift, much of which was spent on hundred dollar jeans in the Misses department at Bloomingdale's. The rest on the most peaceful break of a lifetime, for the man I should never have divorced and I, on the QEII.
I am passing this along because I think that it's important to note that I know of what I speak. I know that it's grueling work, I know that it, as with most things, ain't all it's cracked up to be, but I also know that Layla has something truly special, because I ALSO know which children they choose and which they overlook, and in most cases that I saw, they weren't looking for tiny Elizabeth Taylor's.

They were looking for different. Look at it this way,  if you think of all of the babies you either know or have known, and line them up in your mind's eye, do you see any that stand out because of facial character or personality that just jumps out of their little eyes? 

If you do, they should have been at casting calls instead of in preschool full time, because had they been, they'd be far more well off in many ways right now, and one can be tutored in anything!
I digress, as usual, my apologies. It's that brevity thing, as usual.
What I'm saying is that I have to find Layla an agent, one who is legit and good, someone who does babies from 9 to 24 months; because what I have here is one very cooperative, friendly, funny baby who oozes character and never shuts up.....

              Any takers?