I was a reluctant grandmother.
“I’m too young to be a grandmother,” I warned my children. When my oldest broke the news that, like it or not, I had reached the age of grandmother-consent, I behaved in proper grandmotherly fashion: excited, enthusiastic, supportive. All the while thinking “But I’m not old enough!”
Aren’t grandmothers supposed to be imbued with wisdom, patience and a faint whiff of l’Air du Temps? I have the face and form of a 60-plus woman with the outlook of a 17-year-old. How does that translate into wise old owl?
Holding my granddaughter within a few days of her birth put an end to those misgivings.
I felt a rush of pheromones akin to the rush I felt when my first child – her father – was born. My first solo outing with her was to a café near her home in northern NSW, where I found myself surrounded by big burly chefs with multiple tattoos and children of their own, cooing like pigeons around my granddaughter. I couldn’t take my eyes off her sleeping form in the pram and remembered how – thirty years earlier – I had configured her father’s pram so that I could gaze at him while walking.
In the six years since then, I’ve seen her learn to smile, walk, talk, and bond with her baby brother. I’ve watched him transition from a pink-loving wearer of fairy dresses to a soccer-loving four-year-old. I’ve been there for as many milestones as possible, considering the 1600 kilometres that separate us.
I’ve also witnessed the vicissitudes of the lives of this little family unit: the isolation of the pandemic, the financial challenges of the double whammy of a growing family and thirteen consecutive interest rate rises. I’ve discovered the difficulties (and expense) of long-distance grandmothering and the realities of short sharp visits of an intensity that only living under the same roof can produce.
I have learned that a grandmother’s job is not to dispense wisdom but to keep her mouth shut unless advice is requested. Our relationships with our children shift and change over time, and we all have to adapt to the circumstances. Our love for each other is enduring and unconditional, but this love can occasionally get a little lost in the maelstrom of life.
I’ve also learned the joys of reunion, with each one being a special occasion. There is nothing to compare with the sight of a grandchild, glimpsing you through the bars of the childcare centre and running at you, arms wide: the utter surprise and delight when the sight of you watching a sad movie elicits a chubby arm around your neck and a “Don’t cry Gran.” The ineffable sadness of watching them come to terms with living in two homes and dividing their time between two beloved parents.
No, I will never be grown up enough for this gig but the rewards for this grandmother are greater than my fear of exposing my shortcomings to the world.
My grandchildren don’t seem to notice these shortcomings. My adolescent sense of fun is not so far removed from theirs, and together we have lots of it. I take them to see their favourite films accompanied by a live performance of the score and in return, they call anything orchestral ‘Gran’s music’. I read them my favourite books and those books become their favourites.
Every morning of every visit, we sit up in bed and play Wordle. The four-year-old’s first word is always ‘dinosaur’, his second is always ‘bingo’: The almost-six-year-old enters the letters I spell out and her brother presses ‘enter’. My statistics are always better when they are with me.
A friend once compared having grandchildren to falling in love. I can attest to that, having now fallen in love not once but twice within the space of two years. Soon, my granddaughter will be old enough to fly unaccompanied on a plane to visit me, and I am already full of plans. This grandmother is reluctant no more.