My first grandchild was born on March 12. Her name is Sophia Tovah Webb. She and her mother are doing very well and are now at home. Whew. The experience of being a grandmother is way less painful than becoming a mother, but I have been surprised by how it emphasizes my awareness of mortality. I feel like I am floating atop an immeasurable sea of life that contains everything that has happened since the beginning of time. I am lucky that most of my immediate family is still here with me on the surface (my dad will celebrate his 88th birthday this Sunday) and now we are joined by this new adorable sprig with all her charm and potential. However, as she emerges into Being, others are slipping back into the all encompassing waters. Hazel's dad is gone, Dee's sister Noreen died just as Sophia was being born, a good friend has been diagnosed with lung cancer and I am feeling my own age beginning to press upon me. The arrival of the baby, with its joy and fear and tension has cast a beam of light into the abyss and I can see us all here alive atop all that have lived before us and all that are waiting to be. Each of us rises just like Sophia into a material existence that offers specific experience, and then takes that unique life back into the whole, which is rich beyond our ability to imagine. It is our never-ending story. I wish for my granddaughter a life full of love as she flowers into the person only she can be, and I consider my own trajectory and the opportunities for growth that still await me. May the light of life shine upon us all.