Dear Mamée and Pepé,
I am writing to you today from New Britain, where, every time I pass through, I always remember Nana, visiting your mother, Pepé, with you, Mamée, hanging out in her apartment in the old school house, drinking ginger ale and watching her water the plants. The room I am in now is not too much smaller—a hospital room where my wife KJ just gave birth to your first great-grandchild, Mom’s first grandchild, and KJ’s and my first child—a beautiful baby daughter!
Your great-granddaughter Louisa Maire Hill was born this evening at 6:09pm. She is 19.5” and weighs 7lbs 8oz.
It is important to me that you both know that I am thinking of you as KJ and I celebrate this incredible life event, and about the relatively brief but crucial and memorable times I shared with you. And I want you both to know how special those times were.
Today is an incredible, inspiring day, a gift in itself in which I have received this wonderful gift of fatherhood. But in addition to being filled with excitement, anticipation and a healthy dose of worry, I am appreciating the intermittent pangs of sadness that I feel knowing you could not be here with us today.
I know that neither of you met KJ, but of course you would have loved her. We were in the same class at Dartmouth, so we knew of each other, but we didn’t really meet and start dating until December 2006, four and a half years after we graduated. Since then, we have both earned additional degrees at Dartmouth. I earned my creative writing masters this spring, and KJ graduated from Dartmouth Medical School in 2010, just shy of the one-year anniversary of our wedding, which was held outdoors in Hanover, NH in a beautiful corner of the Dartmouth campus. KJ is now an OB-GYN resident here in Connecticut. She is a wonderful doctor, and clearly she is loved by her co-workers, given how many of them came in today to wish her well before the delivery. She is a hard worker, Pepé, as I remember you were. And Mamée, you will be pleased to know that KJ, like both of her parents, plays the piano and is an accomplished musician.
Thank you, Mamée and Pepé, for the love you have given your family, your guidance, your love and support. We would be nothing without you. I can’t wait to tell Louisa, as she grows up in our family, all about her wonderful great-grandparents Maureen and Stuart Dery!
Love,
Greg
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