Essay

On Being a Grandmother

By: Barbara Feinberg,

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On Being a Grandmother

My younger son became a father a year ago, my first grandchild. I waited a long time to be a grandmother and eagerly looked forward to the baby’s birth. Months before his birth, I had found a copy of Goodnight Moon in Spanish for the baby: my son is a Spanish literature PhD candidate, so the book was perfect. Working hours and hours on a needlepoint of the final scene in the book as the due date approached, I enjoyed the process as the rocking chair, the mouse, the knitting needles and the moon emerged from the painted canvas. I had put in a request well-ahead of time to be sure that space on the yellow wall would be waiting for the finished product.

Visiting three weeks after the baby’s birth was not sheer joy despite my anticipation and excitement. I’ve always felt awkward and uncertain with newborns, although I raised two children who’ve turned out to sleep through the night and use the bathroom in a timely fashion, as far as I know. Worried about doing it right, faking feeling calm and confident, I certainly wasn’t fully present during that first visit. Rather, my chest constricted, my jaw clenched and my shoulders scrunched up to my ears with my heart beating faster and my breath shorter than is comfortable or usual.

All the while, this little boy was so dear to me. A very progressive friend describing the first time he met his granddaughter had reported, “I had never met her before, didn’t even know her, whether she’d be liberal or conservative. I just knew I’d die for her.”
My son carried his infant, changing diapers, walking around and around all the while whispering endearments. How had he learned to care for a baby so sweetly and calmly? His tenderness was palpable and so moving, my eyes filled with tears over and over again. That part of being a grandparent was thrilling: seeing my child fathering his child.

Later, taking the requisite three-generation picture, I focused on the tiny face looking so wise and alert, my husband holding the baby carefully, my son’s hand on his dad’s shoulder. We had arrived at a new place in our relationships: the two empty-nesters as grandparents, my son and daughter-in-law as father and mother, with the baby, a new nuclear family. Were we going to be increasingly unimportant to this self-contained unit? Yes and no.

Flooded with both warmth and a sense of loss remembering that moment, I still melt when I see them together. Meeting my grandson put in high relief the reality of my son’s independence. So clearly a man, he didn’t seem to need his mom at all. And yet he is eager for me to hear about the baby’s new tricks on almost daily basis, a shared enjoyment of the wonder of a healthy happy baby.

As was to be expected, the new parents have their own notions about the baby’s sleep patterns, crying limits, frequency of nursing and the like. They seem all-knowing and supremely confident, certainly not soliciting input, rather resenting any tentatively-offered advice and questions from me. They have made clear that my ideas are not welcome or useful, a painful boundary-setting that was just deserts, I suppose, after my own parenting choices jarred my son’s grandmothers: a corollary of that curse, “Your child should only do to you what you are doing to me.”
Now the baby takes more and more steps every day, a determined delicious toddler. He holds his arms out to me to be picked up and held. He listens when I show him the apple and ark, the violin and the violets on the new alphabet needlepoint I stitched for his first birthday. He points to more and more figures, saying, “Dis? Dis?” He’s become a person, bright, funny, strong-willed and curious about everything. He is an absolute delight and I am filled with the feelings other grandparents predicted.

Playing with him, I am finally fully present, experiencing only the great pleasure of being there without any sense of loss or sadness.
Away from him,though, there are moments of melancholy interwoven with the gratification of being a nana, acute awareness of my own mortality, what I won’t see or be part of as I age and he grows up. Will I see him make varsity on the lacrosse team like his father? Be at his high school graduation? Know what his major is in college? See if he turns out to be a Democrat or Republican or worse yet, apathetic and self-absorbed? Tell him about his father at each age and see how similar and different they are? I may or may not.

Still watching his world and capabilities grow as long as possible is wonderful, the delight balancing and exceeding the sadness at what I won't be here to witness, both part of my reality as a grandmother.

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