My Unique Change

Grandma Vinson held her six-month-old grand- child in her arms. She tenderly stroked the child’s skin and gently examined its tiny fingers. Then she looked up at her daughter and son-in-law who were smiling proudly at their first-born. “This is no boy,” said Grandma. “This is a girl.” When my mother told me this story a few years ago she said she had at first thought Grandma was joking. “Don’t be silly, Mother,” she’d said, with a laugh. “I’ll take the diaper off and prove it’s a boy.” “You’d have a hard time proving that to the doctors, Grandma,” joked my father. “If he’s a she, then someone told me the wrong facts of life.” But Grandma Vinson wasn’t joking. “This baby’s got the feel of a girl,” she said. “It’s in the skin and the fingers.”