Grandma, Grandpa
Becoming a grandparent is the simplest, yet the most thrilling, experience of life. You wake up one fine morning to be informed that you had become a grandparent. You didn’t have to go through the inconvenience of carrying the baby within you for so many months, the discomfort of morning sickness, the sudden craving for the erstwhile distasteful pickles, tamarind, clay or some other rubbish like that. Nor, did you have to go through the lengthy training program in natural childbirth called ‘La maze’, or the hassle of shopping for the baby’s nursery, indirect hints for baby showers, and above all the pangs of child birth with the screams of “never, again, never again”.
The arrival of a grand child opens up for you the portals of unexpected bliss, the wonderful world of joy and endless fun. As for the parents, they serve as a bridge, a mere hyphen between the grandparents and grandchildren.
By the time a baby is some six months of age and has started responding to ‘your’ baby talk with a non-speaking person, by giggling at your stupidity, you echo the words of that famous author and grandmother of twenty, Lois Wyse: Grandchildren are so much of fun, I should have had them first. How? You ask her; that is the very title of her book.
A few days back I noticed a customized bumper sticker on a car in the parking lot of a school. It read: “Happiness is being the grandmother of Sara”. That reminded me of what Aristotle is reported to have said about happiness: “Everything in this world is striving for the good; happiness is the good in man, so man strives for happiness.”
The American constitution assures the citizens of their right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It is another matter that some Americans interpret the “pursuit of happiness” in the same way as did Clinton and Monica.
I couldn’t help wondering what exactly was meant by the expression “happiness”. So, I consulted the dictionary. It described “happiness” as enjoyment. and “enjoyment” as happiness. Very enlightening! One may therefore consider the definition of Sara’s grandmother as more precise and explicit. Speaking in general terms, it would be: Happiness is being a grandparent.
The beauty of the thing is that one becomes a grandmother without first saying “yes”, or a grandfather without first arguing about it with the grandmother-to-be.
You might be a reluctant grandparent, being not even forty, and having therefore not yet graduated from the guitar in your hand to the golf club, or from the deep shade of lipstick and light make-up to a light shade of lipstick and deep make-up; but you cannot avoid becoming a grandparent. Soon you discover the happiness of it all, the pride the event instills in you.
When my first son was born in an Ottawa hospital, I approached hesitatingly the glass window from where we were allowed to view our babies. I was diffident as the baby weighed only six pounds - the average then being eight pounds. Next to me at the window was a fat man, who was beaming with happiness and distributing cigars - a common custom at that time. Giving one to me, he said: “Have you ever seen such a handsome baby, such a superb, such a perfect baby?” The baby weighed only 4 1/2 pounds and had to be kept in an incubator!
While I was just a father, he was a grandfather. And, a grandparent is nothing if not proud of the grandchild even if it weighed half of the normal weight.
Indeed, the society confers a privileged position on grandparents. If you are one of these privileged persons, you may spoil the baby as much as gives you “enjoyment” or “ happiness”. You can play with the baby all you like, feed it all those sweets and other stuff that the mother thinks unhealthy, and you may buy for him/her all those flashy clothes that you didn’t like for your own children.
All choices are open to you. Do with him/her what you like. No one will question your motive. How can a grandparent wish or do something against the interest of the grandchild? Exploit that common misconception.
Your son or daughter may occasionally protest: “Mummy, please don’t spoil Sara. Let her sleep in her crib; if she gets used to the lap, she may expect me to sit up the whole night with her in my lap.” You simply ignore that and proceed cultivating in her the pleasure of the cozy lap and the gentle rocking knee. If she starts crying at the top of her voice once you put her back in her crib, you may start yawning conveniently and proceed to your own bed leaving the baby to be attended to by her mother. Parents discipline; grandparents spoil.
You may flaunt and praise the baby to the sky and nobody would find fault with you - not on your face at least. Who can embellish, embroider and adorn facts more artfully than a grandpa or a grandma? The other grandparents may be blue in the face with jealousy but won’t utter a word, as soon after they would in the same vein of exaggeration describe the feats of their own grandchildren. They would unabashedly boast of the child’s innate intelligence, pretty looks and uncanny resemblance to their side of the family.
“You know what”, Sami’s grandma would declare: “My Sami can now kick the soccer ball right over the six-foot fence. And, he has just started walking.”
“Really! How wonderful. Sara too is precocious. She is doing the Mariachi dance just by watching the TV.”
Once a baby starts talking, he/she becomes for the grandparents the most quotable person on earth. But, sometimes the child may come out with an unquotable quote. When Sara was two, she asked: “How did you look grandma when you were new.” Or, when in response to grandpa’s advice to Barry, Sara’s younger brother, that he should grow up to be a gentleman, Barry responded, “I don’t want to be a gentleman; I want to be just like you, Grandpa!”
A few years later when Barry wasn’t yet two, the grandma bought for him a soccer ball so that he could beat Sami at the game. She also bought for him a soccer player’s uniform despite the fact that the only thing he was young enough to wear was a diaper. Even the smallest uniform was three sizes bigger. Perhaps she wanted him to grow faster to be able to put on the uniform and play in the field. She fed him fat-full grub; he grew, no doubt, but horizontally.
She took him to the playground and forced much older neighborhood kids to play with him. If he failed to stop the ball coming almost straight towards him, she would be quick with the alibi: “The sun was in his eyes”. If he missed a ball again - well, he just couldn’t reach it because it was so swift. If he kicked the head of a kid who had slipped and fallen on the field, she would be ready with the excuse: “It is not his fault, that kid’s silver-blonde head looks like a ball. Doesn’t it?”
Years later when Sami, Sara and Sara’s younger brother Barry were all going to the same school, Sara’s grandma noticed a sticker on the rear fender of the van driven by Sami’s grandmother: “My grandson is on the honor role of the school”. Within days Sara’s grandmother had a sticker just beneath the earlier sticker that had claimed that happiness was being the grandmother of Sara. The new sticker said, “My Barry can lick your honor role kid.”
This sticker sounded amusing but undignified and hollow. The first sticker about happiness being a grandmother had all the force of truth behind it.
Let me give here an extract from the memoirs of Raisa Gorbachev, wife of the former Soviet President. “When our first granddaughter was born my husband and I went to see her in the maternity home. As we entered the vestibule I said to the nurse: ‘Open the door wider - grandma has arrived!’ The nurse opened the door, looked to see who was behind me and said: ‘But where is the grandmother?’
Happiness or enjoyment, in the form of grandchildren comes quite late in life. So enjoy them, be proud of them, pamper and spoil them as much as you can before the time comes to leave the transit lounge and catch the plane to the hereafter.
