My Grandma Got Me Pregnant

Back in August 2020, Mamaw asked me to take her to visit her sister Pete in Pennsylvania. It’s about a 9 hour drive from North Carolina to Pennsylvania, and nothing but mountain towns in between. My daughter, Anna, decided to join us, so one weekend we loaded up and went on our little adventure. We drove almost all the way straight through, only stopping for gas or food maybe once or twice. The entire time we spent talking, no radio. I have a good amount of passenger anxiety and for the first thirty minutes Mamaw drove. It was about 6am, dark and rainy. Mamaw kept saying “What’s that up there in front of us?” and I would say, “It’s a truck and a trailer Mamaw” while gripping the door handle and trying not to hyperventilate. She abruptly pulled to the side of the road and said something along the lines of letting me drive since I was being such a wimp. So, the other 8 and a half hours, I drove and we talked.

She had traveled this road many times throughout her life, coming back and forth between her home state and North Carolina and she often pointed out places she used to stop with her sister or with her kids. She talked to me and Anna a lot about her childhood. When she was very young, her family sent her to live with another family and be a companion to their child. From there, she went to work in a restaurant where she was so little she had to stand on a chair to take people’s orders, and lied about her age when she was 13 to be able to rent her first apartment. I have never met another person that worked harder to take care of herself and her family.

When we got on the road to Pennsylvania, I asked Mamaw if she had made arrangements about where we would be staying, and to my surprise she said, “No, no one knows we are coming.” Nothing like a little spontaneity, right? Well, to add to that, she hadn’t seen her sister Pete in seven or eight years, maybe longer. And Pete had no idea we were coming. When we walked through the door, Pete was on the phone and looked up at Mamaw in surprise and said, “Well what in the hell are you doing here?!” They hugged each other. Mamaw sat down next to her and didn’t leave her side until we left. You could tell they had been missing each other, even though they were both so stubborn they would never admit it.

Anna and I had a great time catching up with our PA relatives. Even though there was no cell phone signal or technology, we got caught up in the beauty of it and enjoyed the company of Mamaw’s people, our people. We shared a couch at night, but it was better than any king-sized better because it felt like an adventure and a connection to the past.

When we got back into town, Mamaw was already asking when I’d like to go back again. She loved being with her sister, and I think she enjoyed the road trip. What I didn’t realize until after we left, is that I had left my birth control behind while we were in PA. I wasn’t too worried about it because I started taking it again when we got back, but apparently Matt and I opened up some kind of portal to the great beyond and hit some lucky numbers on a full moon or something because about a month later Satan’s waterfall still hadn’t arrived. When I told Mamaw I was pregnant, I was pretty distraught because it was so unexpected and unplanned, and she said “It’ll be alright, you just bring that little baby to me and I’ll help take care of it.” So, I jokingly say my grandma got me pregnant because I left my birth control behind on our little spontaneous adventure, but the truth is she gave me a great gift and helped me get through a hard time with my head up.

A couple months ago, Mamaw and Papaw both caught Covid. They went into the hospital after a week or two, and Papaw ended up in serious condition. Mamaw got to come home for a few weeks and me and Anna were able to come and stay with her some. She ended up going back into the hospital because her oxygen kept dropping, right as Papaw was finally able to go home. Because of the damage done to her lungs from the virus, Mamaw wasn’t able to recover and passed away. I honestly thought she was so mean and tough she’s live forever, or that I’d at least get to show her this little baby when he is born. Reality still hasn’t quite set in, but there’s one thing I know- she gave a life to a lot of people, and she continues to do so. I imagine she’s walking through the Pearly Gates and her relatives are all surprised and saying, ‘Well what the hell are you doing here?!”