ABSTRACT
Betwixt-and-between times are always unsettling. For me, between knowing I was to become a grandmother and actually becoming one, is proving such a time. It has caught me by surprise: not because the news of the forthcoming baby was surprising, for Lizzie and Hugh, ever since they married nearly four years ago, had always envisaged having children, nor because the implications for me were wholly unexpected, for we had discussed well beforehand my sharing of the childcare, but because the prospect of grandmotherhood has turned out to mean much more in my life than I had imagined. The meanings are multiple, and therefore far from straightforward. Disentangling them has not been easy.
