A Grandmother Across 3000 Miles

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There are moments when a phone is a miracle and a cruel little window at the same time.

Two days ago, that window held my grandson.

My daughter has just had her baby, my third grandchild, and for the first time I was not there. I am working in Indonesia right now, far from the room where he arrived, far from the first cries, far from the tired joy that fills a family when a baby has crossed over into the world. I met him through a screen.

I heard myself speaking to him. I watched his eyes open at the sound of my voice. That small movement almost undid me.

I have been lucky enough to be present before. This time, my arms were empty. My voice had to travel instead.

I met him through a screen

Distance changes the way joy enters the body.

When you are there, joy has weight. It is the weight of a baby placed into your arms. It is the warmth of a forehead. It is the smell of hospital blankets, milk, skin, and new life. It is the way everyone speaks softly even when they are laughing.

Through a phone, joy becomes light. It flickers. It depends on a signal. It can freeze for a second and return. It arrives with tiny delays, as if the heart has to buffer before it can feel everything.

That is how I saw him. Not in my arms, but on a video screen. Not close enough to kiss, but close enough to know.

His eyes opened when he heard me.

I keep returning to that moment because it felt impossible and true. A newborn does not know the world yet, not by sight. He has no map for distance. He has no idea that I am across an ocean, no idea that I am working in another country, no idea that I am counting the miles between us.

But he knew something.

He knew sound. He knew rhythm. He knew that a voice can be a room before a body arrives. He knew that someone was calling to him with love.

That was the beginning of today’s poem.

Today’s 30/30 Project poem is “Newborn”

“Newborn” came from the ache of being both happy and sad at once.

There is no clean separation between those feelings. They sit together. They share the same chair. I am overjoyed that he is here, that my daughter has brought him into the world, that our family has widened again. I am also grieving the fact that I was not there.

That grief is not large in the way tragedy is large. It is quieter than that. It is the grief of a missed handhold. A missed first glance. A missed moment when the room changes forever and everyone inside it knows.

I wrote the poem because I needed to speak to him from where I am. I needed to make a bridge out of voice.

Newborn Katerina Canyon I saw your eyes open on the video screen at the sound of my voice like the first ocean wave, sleepy from swimming through the channel and your home of nine months. I know you. You said with your eyes, turning over every syllable of my voice for some sign of where you heard it before. Your ears know grandmother from where you are to me, 3,000 miles away. You said, I know you with your eyes, knowing the vow in my voice that your home starts with your mother and continues through to where I stand, arms open, promising shelter and a home where all children laugh. And why are you so far away? You said with your eyes open like an oyster shell before the first wave. Where are you? I will be home soon.

A baby hears before he understands

There is something tender about speaking to a newborn who cannot answer with words.

We speak anyway. We always do. We say hello. We say, I love you. We say, I am here, even when we are not. We repeat names. We soften our voices. We let the baby hear the shape of belonging before language has arrived.

That is what I felt while watching him.

His eyes were open, and I imagined him turning my voice over inside himself. Not thinking, not yet. But sensing. Recognizing a pattern. Feeling the vibration of a person who already belongs to him.

I wrote, “Your ears know grandmother,” because I believe our love reaches children before they have words for it. Grandmother is not only a title. It is a sound. It is a promise. It is a shelter that starts forming before the baby can ask for it.

The poem is also about home.

A child’s first home is the mother’s body. Then the mother’s arms. Then the rooms and people that receive him. A true home keeps widening. It becomes a circle of people saying, in their own ways, you are safe here.

I wanted this baby to know that his home does not end at one doorway. It reaches across water. It reaches across time zones. It reaches to me, even while I am far away. My arms are not there yet, but my vow is.

That vow matters.

It says that children deserve laughter. They deserve protection. They deserve adults who will keep making room for them, even when the world feels harsh. I cannot give my grandson everything, but I can give him this promise: when I am home, he will know my arms.

Being away from family asks for a different kind of strength

I have been working in Indonesia, and I am grateful for the work. I am also tired.

That is part of the truth too.

Sometimes life asks us to hold more than one reality at once. I can be thankful for the opportunity to be here and still ache to be home. I can admire the beauty around me and still feel out of place because my family is gathering somewhere else. I can be proud of my daughter and sad that I could not stand near her.

The body keeps score of distance. It knows when it has missed something sacred.

This week, I have felt that in small ways. The hour difference. The waiting for updates. The checking of my phone. The strange feeling of wanting to sleep but not wanting to miss a message. The happiness that arrives with a photo and the sadness that follows because I cannot touch what I see.

By Friday, the exhaustion caught up with me.

I do not have a grand lesson today. I do not have a polished answer for how to be far away from the people you love. I have a poem, a tired body, and gratitude that the week has ended. I am happy it is Friday. I look forward to rest.

That is also part of the 30/30 Project for me. Some days, the poem comes from a large public concern. Some days, it comes from memory. Some days, it comes from a newborn’s eyes on a phone screen while his grandmother sits far away and tries not to cry.

The sadness does not cancel the joy

I keep reminding myself of this.

Sadness does not mean I am ungrateful. Missing one thing does not mean I cannot honor what is present. My grandson is here. My daughter has given birth. Our family has grown.

And still, I wish I had been there.

A lot of love is made of wishing. Wishing I could have held my daughter’s hand. Wishing I could have looked at that baby without glass between us. Wishing I could have said his name close to his cheek. Wishing I could have stood in the room and felt the first day of his life with everyone else.

The poem lets those wishes exist without shame.

It lets me say that distance hurts. It lets me turn the hurt into something that can travel back toward him. A poem can move when the body cannot. A poem can carry the sentence I needed most today: I will be home soon.

Not someday. Not in theory. Soon.

That word is doing a lot of work in my heart right now.

It is a promise to my grandson. It is comfort to myself. It is a way of placing my body in the future, in the room where I will finally meet him. I imagine taking him into my arms and letting the phone disappear from the story. I imagine my voice no longer reaching through a speaker, but through my chest, my breath, my hands.

When that happens, I wonder if he will know me again.

I think he will.

Why I am grateful for Tupelo Press today

The 30/30 Project gives poets a reason to keep showing up.

Some days, that showing up feels full of energy. Other days, it feels like arriving with whatever is left. Today, I arrived tired, emotional, and far from home. The project still made room for the poem.

That matters because poetry often catches what ordinary speech cannot hold. If I had tried to explain the day plainly, I might have said, “My grandson was born, and I am sad I missed it.” That is true, but it is not the whole truth.

The poem gave me the ocean wave. It gave me the oyster shell. It gave me the baby’s eyes. It gave me a place to put the love that could not yet become touch.

This is why literary communities matter. They protect the space where language can become more than information. They make room for grief, joy, memory, witness, and praise. They remind us that a poem does not have to solve anything to be useful. Sometimes it only has to tell the truth carefully.

If “Newborn” moved you, or if you value projects that help poets keep writing, please consider donating to Tupelo Press. Your support helps make space for poems like this one, written in the middle of real life, across real distance.

I will be home soon

Tonight, I am letting myself be tired.

I am letting myself be happy too.

My grandson is here. My daughter is a mother again. I have seen his eyes open. I have watched him listen. I have spoken to him from across 3,000 miles, and something in him answered.

That will have to be enough until I can get home.

For now, I am holding on to the image of his face on the screen, sleepy and new, as if he had just come in from the sea. I am holding on to the way his eyes seemed to ask where I was. I am holding on to the promise I made, the one inside the poem and outside it.

I will be home soon.