Granddaughter's nearly perfect at 13

Our eldest grandchild has just turned 13. No longer a tween, Kelsey is a real-life, full-fledged, hormone-toting, all-knowing, card-carrying teenager.

She would argue, I am sure, that she has been a teen for a long time, that her birth certificate is just now catching up.

Is there any of that going on in your family - kids turning into young adults, turning their parents and grandparents into even older adults? If so, fasten your seat belts, folks; it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Those 13 years have come and gone all too fast; still, I remember well the day it all began.

My wife and I got the telephone call that this was really it. We took off early from work, yanked our daughter - just 13 herself - out of school and sped a couple of hours northward so we could be at the hospital in time for the premiere of the Kelsey show.

We arrived, waited, paced and drank coffee. Jerry was allowed in the delivery room with Michelle, a far cry from the way it was done in my own day, when fathers were kept in a smoky waiting room, out from under foot.

Just minutes after Kelsey kicked and screamed her way into the world, though, we were allowed into the nursery, on the business side of the big glass window that separated adults who should know better from the offspring of adults who obviously didn't.

We could feel the gaze of envious grandparents-yet-to-be who watched us mingle with that precise Swiss movement that is called the nursery staff. We were allowed to hold Kelsey while there was still dew behind her ears, and we got to shadow the hospital personnel as they weighed, inspected, cleaned and injected the cute little brunette we laid claim to.

In our younger days, we had been taught to handle kids with kid gloves, gingerly supporting the head and avoiding that soft spot on the skull. These workers never got that memo, though. They reminded me of farmers tossing heads of cabbage into a truck, college athletes throwing and catching the pigskin with practiced precision.

A woman in white grabbed Grandchild No. 1 off the scales with one hand and lateraled her to another worker who held her under a faucet in a deep sink. As the veteran scrubbed down our granddaughter, JoAn and I watched in shock and awe. So much for the gentle touch.

Kelsey survived that day, somehow, and grew up fast; more vertically than horizontally, becoming willowy of figure and angelic of face. Her dark hair and eyes are complemented by exactly the right number of freckles, inherited from her mother.

As intelligent as she is beautiful, Kelsey will be a force her poor dad might not survive as her teen years run rampant. (On that day of her birth, Jerry looked at her and said, "Oh, no, now there are going to be boys coming around!")

Kelsey is never at a loss for words; she would make a great addition to any debating team. (She once convinced my wife, who was keeping her for the weekend, that her parents allowed her to have chocolate pudding for breakfast every day.)

Her political views, already deep-seated, run exactly contrary to her father's. As I said, he's going to have his hands full.

This 13-year-old is very much her parents' darling, though, a good older sister to little Emily and a mother hen to her younger cousins. She has a curious addiction to ketchup at every meal and a misplaced belief that Georgia Tech will be part of her future. But then, I never said she was perfect.

Just very close.

Reach Glynn Moore at (706) 823-3419 or glynn.moore@augustachronicle.com.