Good or bad, life is an amazing experience, and should never be wasted on lament, hatred, regret or greed.

My life is in an odd kind of limbo at the moment, my daughter is in the hospital waiting to give birth to her first child, my first grandchild.

New York City is not Cambridge, N.Y., and it sounds like she is plunged into a bit of bureaucracy and dysfunction. I love New York, but it is the capital of chaos as well as culture.

It will turn out well, I’m not concerned about that.

I am open about my own life, but I can’t make that choice for her or others, so I won’t be sharing any details of her experience giving birth. That is for her to either reveal or keep to herself. She is fine. She will be meeting her daughter shortly. I am getting a steady stream of text messages and e-mails.

Every writer I know has had a complex relationship with his or her children,  primarily because writers draw so much from their own experience – where else, really, can they go?

This is often difficult for the people they love and for the people around them. Sooner or later, Updike wrote, the writer will use everything in his sight or hearing, to some that is a betrayal.

At some point this weekend, perhaps today or tomorrow,  Emma will meet her child and I will have a grandchild. For now, a curious state of limbo. I never cease to marvel at the way life unfolds and reveals itself to me. I am a passenger on my own ship, never quite sure where it is going.

Last night, a parade of ghosts. I am thinking today of my first wife, Paula Span, a good person and gifted journalist and teacher.  And of the two children we lost decades ago. I think of them often, although not as much as I once did.  Time is a healer, thanks for that. That is a special kind of pain.

Paula and I were married  for 35 years, most of them good. No matter how it turns out, divorce is a kind of failure, a tear in the firmament. I regret any pain I caused.

I was thinking last night of our own time together in a hospital in Baltimore, where the outcome was not good and the news was not happy, at least not at first. I know that has nothing to do with this, but there it is, coming and going as it pleases.

And then, in the very same hospital,  Emma was born in a beautiful and natural birth.  Paula and I were never closer or happier together.

Life unfolds, and unfolds again. I will not ever forget the sight of Emma popping her eyes open, the first thing she saw in the world was my face, and she seemed quite astonished by the sight. She still is, I think.

I do not speak poorly of my life, I am a very fortunate man.

Our loss then has nothing to do with Emma or her experience, but it came up in the night around 3 a.m., as of course it would. I had dreams about the nurses coming to me and reading from a form and asking me if I needed to “ventilate.” I thought they wanted to know if I had to go to the bathroom.

I remind myself that this day is not about me or my past, but about my daughter and the future. Shake it off, let it go. Ghosts are ghosts, they don’t work for me, I don’t have a switch to turn them on or off. I don’t really have anything substantive to do, just my imagination is loose and free. That is not always a good thing.

Paula and I were determined to have an equitable divorce, we had been together a long time, the more feeling, they say, the tougher the separation.

Emma was the crown jewel of our marriage, we kept her apart from our separation and the process of dismantling our marriage. The divorce process does not promote love and civility, we had a long and difficult time.

But that is over. We have always been civil with one another,  I married again, and we drifted apart. We have always wished one another well.  My life today has little, if any, resemblance to my life before.

This week, we are brought back together, sharing the experience of Emma’s birth. Paula is very close to her daughter, and lives nearby. She is with her in support, and she and I are communicating, sharing information and our hopes and thinking of Emma, the child we brought into the world together.

I once felt shut out of my family, I even moved away from it. Today I am grateful to know she is with Emma, keeping an eye on things, offering her love and support, keeping me informed. And I am grateful as well for my own life.  I suppose it is easy to be here. Maria is so supportive of me, but I imagine this must be complicated for her, trying to figure out where she fits into this complex new reality.

She knows this has rattled me and is trying to help. But some parts of me will never open up, I think.  I sometimes think I am stalked by Aka Manah, the Zoroastrian demon of evil thinking, unreachable and closed off.

This is all, I don’t mind saying, is a tumble of emotions for me.

For the first time, these two worlds are colliding, coming together, one invoking the other. I don’t even have a grandchild yet, but I feel the process is transforming me.

I am far from what is happening in New York City, in so many different ways, secure and engaged in my new life.

Emma and her new husband and Paula – and soon, her daughter – will share the same world, and I don’t.  And I shouldn’t.  It’s not my function any more. Isolation is a state of mind, it sometimes has nothing to do with reality, it has been my state of mind my entire life.

I can’t say I don’t feel some sadness about that, even some echoes loneliness. I don’t really have a role to play now, that is a strange feeling for someone like me. My new role will be getting to know my granddaughter and loving and supporting her.

I am  nothing but grateful that Paula can be there for Emma right now. She will be of immense support for her, and that is a great relief and comfort to me.

I can’t do much but love her and root for her from afar. I am certainly doing that. I imagine that this child will open a new chapter for all of us, will move our lives forward in a loving and joyous way. I know that I am helpless in the face of life. I have learned to let go, I surrender completely to it.