A True Story of a Special Gift

The following is a true story from the father-to-be.

As you know, we are having identical twin girls and a boy sometime in the next nine weeks.

Two weeks ago, my mother gave us a gift that had been left for me by my maternal grandmother before she died nine years ago. What it contained may surprise you as much as it did us.

All her life, my grandmother was doing kind things for other people, especially using her skills in crocheting to make blankets, hats, and the like.

By the time she passed away in May 2000, shortly before her 91st birthday, four of my five siblings had had their children, and she had made all those great grandchildren of hers gifts she knitted.

Before she died, she started asking my mother if my one brother who, like me, had not yet had children, was going to get back with his wife, since they were divorcing. My Mom said that that was not likely. For months my grandmother asked this question. My Mom kept telling her that my brother and his wife would not be getting back together.

“That’s strange,” my grandmother would say, “because I keep seeing him with twins.”

In 1998 she gave my mother a large bag that she said contained gifts for my brother and me for when we had children. She said she didn’t think I would have children for a while. She was still convinced my brother would have twins.

In 2003, my brother and his new wife (who had gotten married in fall 1999) had twins, a girl and a boy. My mother opened the bag our grandmother had left. Inside were two plastic bags. One bag contained two sets of items wrapped in tissue paper. My Mom gave those gifts to my brother. They were items Grandma had crocheted. They were two sets of baby blankets and hats. They were different in design from one another and gender neutral, one white and one yellow and white.

That left one plastic bag remaining. Two weeks ago, my mother gave to us what it had contained. When we opened the gift, we were stunned. What was it? Items for babies that my grandmother had crocheted and packaged together in the remaining bag. Specifically, there were three sets of baby blankets and hats, each in separate designs. Two sets were pink and white (one pink, white and green), clearly meant for girls, and one set was blue, clearly meant for a boy.

Someday, we will give them to our children – our two girls and a boy – and tell them what their great grandmother left them, somehow as if she had known they were coming.

We have placed below a picture of the hats.