Why do I say step?

I'm a grandmother. It took a long time to reach that stage in my life because my son didn't marry until the the age of 30. Then I became an instant grandmother. Hannah was five at the time, six now. I truly love her so it bothers me that I constantly find myself calling her my step granddaughter. She's a wild child, full of spunk. She intimidates me. I always expected to grow into grandmotherhood slowly as my grandchildren grew from babies and we slowly got to know each other. I never got to cuddle this little girl as a baby. Never got to hear her coo and see her blow bubbles. Never got to hear her say her first gibberish words or see her take her first wobbly steps. I hear about the things she does, but she lives three states away from me so she's really still a stranger to me. So how will we get to know each other and how am I going to get comfortable with being her gramma? That is something that has weighed heavily on my mind. For starters the phone calls to and from her parents need to happen earlier in the day, at least once in a while. When she's already gone to bed there's no chance of those 20 second conversations with Hannah where she tells me things like, "I'm going to give the cat a bad haircut!" I'm going to start making little movies on my webcam that I can email for her parents to play for her. Things like reading a story to her. Then she can get to know me better. Then this summer we will really get to know each other when I go down to take care of her while her mom is in the hospital having baby brother Riley by cesarean. By then I expect the step to have disappeared from my vocabulary. And when I go down, I'll be taking something special to her. My grandfather passed away when I was 7. I don't remember him well, but I have something very special. I have a small child sized kitchen cabinet and table that he made for me. I've always cherished those because he went to the trouble of making them himself just for me. Some of the toy dishes I played with are still in the cabinet. So these special toys of mine are going to be my special gift to this special little girl. I hope that she treasures them as much as I have.