Developing Humans - Now I Know

As a child, I never really thought of myself as lucky to have all of my grandparents living and in close proximity to my own house. My grandparents were a regular part of our everyday lives.

Starting as far back as I can recall, my sisters and I spent alternating weekends at the homes of my mom's and dad's parents. We would mix up the combinations -- this week, I and my younger sister would be at one set, while our older sister stayed with the other, then switch sisters and/or grandparents the next weekend. That way, theoretically, you could stay at only your current favorites' home for an entire month. Still, efforts would be made so that the "others" could also spend time with you during that period, usually via Sunday dinner.

Read more about the joys of Motherhood. Other "Now I Know" columns include:

Introduction

Clutter

Distraction

Equal Parenting

Memories

Pain

Photographs

Sacrifice

Preparation
Pride
Sentimentality

I guess this is the reason that I never really understood friends of mine who would say I was "so lucky to have" my grandparents. To me, having grandparents was like having parents -- I never considered any other way, and none of them were particularly unique in my eyes. That's not to say that I didn't like my grandparents: on occasion, I even liked all of them at the same time. Usually, though, I went through phases of being mad at one or the other, or thinking that someone wasn't "cool" enough.

For example, my mom's mom, who tended to be my favorite because she was so "cool" (that is, she smoked cigarettes from a long-stemmed, jeweled holder, drank scotch, and wore rhinestone-studded cat-eye glasses) really bought herself a long stint of not being liked when she gave away our dog. We had given her our first (and only, as it turned out) dog when we moved to a townhouse, because she had a yard. She also had an evil, child-hating poodle who picked fights with our gentle, lovable mutt. Boom -- our dog was gone when we came to visit one weekend, supposedly to the home of a distant relative who lived "in the country".

Then there were my lovely adolescent years when I was tremendously rotten and had a thorough disdain for my dad's mom, she being the antithesis of cool. Here we were, decades from the Great Depression, still being offered barfy hard candies like they were priceless gems. She had (and still has ) a tendency to get stuck when it came to knowing what we liked -- since answering the perfunctory "what are your favorites?" questions around age five, I was forever doomed to receive things colored green and eat little frozen party pizzas over and over at her house. I showed her: as a teenager, I snuck cigarettes on her back porch.

The grandfathers did not evoke nearly the same kind of loathing and spite that the grandmothers occasionally did, but they too had their moments in the sun of my childhood. My mom's dad, the proverbial cowboy, sprayed me with the gardenhose as I sat in a tree in his front yard, accusing me of shaking leaves from the tree as he raked. We already suspected that it was best to avoid him; now there was no doubt in my mind that he was mean. My dad's dad, similar to his stuck-in-time wife, spent a lot of time taking his teeth out and making faces at us, which was really funny around age five but sort of embarassing at ten.

As an adult, I know now that I was lucky. I was lucky to have known these people with their eccentricities. I was lucky to know the bad and good things about them. I learned that you don't always understand or like the people you are related to, but they are yours nonetheless. However, I never really "got it" when people talked about wanting badly to be grandparents. Craving parenthood I understood, but not grandparenthood. What's the big deal? You want to be viewed by some child as a wacky, out-of-touch old coot?

As I watched my mom hold my son, I got it. Fortunately for her, my mom was made a grandmother several years ago by my sister. Now, she is getting on in age and, due to her health, not up to par for much horseplay or even babysitting. But when my husband asked her if she wanted to hold our then six week old son, she nearly gasped as she said "yes!" and her eyes shined.

I thought, as I watched her hold him with great expertise and confidence, this boy may be her last opportunity to hold a baby. She looked up from his face occasionally as she told the usual stories about my sisters and me as babies, her babies. Holding my son, she was feeling all over what she had last felt some thirty-something years ago, emotions which I felt so priveleged to be feeling these days. Then it dawned on me that he may be one of the last opportunities for me also, unless he has children and I am alive to witness it.

Suddenly, I want to last long enough to be a grandmother, and I don't care what the kids think of me and my silly ways.

"Now I Know" first appeared on Moms Online, part of the Oxygen Media network (http://oxygen.com), and is reprinted with permission.

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