This is an entry about mothers and daughters, and grandmothers and granddaughters, and how they all seem to be the same thing to me. I have always loved the chaos of my maternal grandmother's house on holidays.  There, four sisters and their husbands-at-the-time, plus eleven grandchildren, would get together for buffet meals, sitting at the kids' table, having cousins explain the intricacies of Santa Clause to other cousins, and each one of us would feel special for being a part of the group.  When my parents divorced when I was fourteen and my mom went to live on the other side of the country, I clung closer to my grandmother's house and my extended family.  I missed my mother and longed to be in the embrace of the multi-generational melee. It didn't take long to associate the yearning for a baby with the yearning I had felt for my mom in high school.  I used to cry in my room, trying to sob silently, feeling so alone and so unable to "get over it," missing my mother so so much.  I have been trying to conceive for almost two years now, but I have been longing for a baby for longer than that.  When I cry I try to be quiet so nobody thinks I'm overreacting or feeling sorry for myself.  And I don't try to advertise that I desperately want what I don't have.  That would make me such a pathetic failure.  I try not to think of it as my much-beloved mother, much-beloved daughter as having abandoned me.  But where is she, and why does everyone else get to be with theirs?  I need her.  I don't know why; I think it's just natural.  And it's not fair that I have to be alone. Now I am not alone any more.  Beyond the fact that I "coincidentally" settled two miles away from my mom in Washington, D.C., but I am also happily married in a way that baffles my solitary little mind.  I am not used to depending on anyone, or letting anyone see how sad or alone I feel, but I've started depending on this beautiful man in the last four years.  I find that he likes it, and I find that he makes me feel not so sad and not so alone.  And anyway, I like him a real lot, as my friend Lucy would say.  I love him. Not withstanding this amazing development of marital love, I still have a very special and irreplaceable relationship with my grandmother.  In high school, in college, and in my years of travel and school after college, I have kept in close touch with her.  She and I both love to read and write.  I get it from her.  We both have music as a religion, and we are both "people people."  It's easy for us to get people to like us; that comes easily to us.  Our default is to be friendly and smile.  And most of all, we understand each other.  Despite the hoardes of relatives, we each think the other is very unique and special.  We feel connected in our maternal lineage.  I am very, very proud to be my mother's daughter and my grandmother's granddaughter.  This maternal connection means very much to me and is a big part of me. When I visited Mamaw this weekend in Texas, I asked how her health was, because she is 94 and starting to get weak and tired.  She said she was fine, and didn't know what the fuss was about.  She was simply "fading."  I had used that word myself, when I speculated from afar about what might be happening.  I asked if she thought she were "go[ing] gently into that good night," as Dylan Thomas had put it.  She said yes.  She explained that old people didn't get scared and worried about the prospect of death the way younger people did.  I pointed out that when she died (even though we don't really believe this), she'd have a chance to see her beloved daddy and her husband.  And she added, "and Barbara," her little sister who died last fall at 92.  For some reason, though I have dreaded Mamaw's death for a decade or more, I don't feel the same panic I might have a few years ago.  I know she wants to die.  She's lonely for her contemporaries, her peers.  She's tired and ready to go.  She has done everything she wants to do.  And me, I can let her go off into that darkness if she wants to, because I have James to lean on now.  I'm not as alone as I used to be. But when I was on the plane coming home, I watched the movie "Dan, In Real Life."  It depicted a widower in a romantic comedy with his siblings, nephews, nieces, parents, and children.  As I watched the three generations step all over each other in the small house, I started to cry.  I was so sad to leave my grandmother, but also so sad not to be a part of that large family any more.  In my family, my three aunts have become grandmothers.  My cousins have become parents.  The great-grandchild generation has become a series of first and second cousins.  All Christmasses happen at my individual aunts' houses with their own families.  My grandmother is now a great-, and has been relegated to the role of guest, observer.  She feels it's time for her to go.  She has outlived her expectations, her place.  That's what she thinks, and I see some truth to it.   But what about me?  I'm stuck.  Where is my daughter?  Where are my children?  It's time to make a new branch of the family tree, even as the trunk settles back in its bark.  But my branch isn't coming.  I realize that I'm starting to panic that I'll lose my grandmother without having anyone of the next generation to come along and fill her spot.  How can I become the matriarch of a large, chaotic family if I can't even have a child of my own?  Who will I love and hold close if Mamaw dies and I have no baby?  How can I keep the connection going between my grandmother and my baby if they don't get a chance to meet?  I fear that soon I'll be grandmotherless and she'll never ever come back.  And then I fear that the baby I keep grasping for will never ever come along.  She's just never ever even exist.  Where will I be?  My lifelong understanding of my place in a family, my place in a world, just won't work.  It just won't work!   We have plans to name our daughter (I know, if we have a girl) after my grandmother.  I told Mamaw that the other day as she sat with her Katharine Hepburn-like legs draped over a chair leg.  She was delighted.  I just can't lose her without having someone else with my own blood and my own quirks to belong to and to love.  I just can't do it.  What will I do?  What will become of me?  Who will I be?  How can I go on?