My heart just melted looking into the wide brown eyes of my second-born’s eighteen month old and watched him smile each time I came close. His father said “he got those brown eyes from you Grandma. Did anyone in your family have his strawberry blonde hair?” My heart skipped a beat when I realized those golden locks came from my paternal grandmother “Ga Ga,” who told me in a dream that I would get to do the real thing.
I can count on my hands the times I’ve visited my first-born’s son who turns 17 in February adopted by the lovely teenage mom who created a new family for him. I’ve also been kept from seeing a granddaughter now 15 by another mother. 
Yet time can heal, his act cleaned up, my son has blessed me with a lovely wife and great mom to two-and-a-half year old Sierra with another one on the way!
I just got back from a Saturday morning trip to The Aquarium nearby. The average age of parent visitors was in their 20’s or 30’s, some pushing strollers, others like ours letting toddlers run from room to room, or window to window marveling as sea lions, giant turtles and sting rays swim past. As we grands and even great-grands sat on welcome benches my husband and I shook our heads “how’d we ever do it?”
This in-person grandparenting is exhausting and delight-full.