Weave the Web

The Grandmother Connection

 

 

Despite all the hype about the joys of grandparenting, despite all the license plates sporting “Happiness is being a grandmother,” I was not prepared for the tremendous tug at my heart when I first saw my tiny grandson at age one-and-a-half hours.  From the start, I was completely gaga over this little boy.  Now, as he edges toward his second birthday, we have become the best of pals.

Early on Luca decided I was “Nana.”  I have no idea why.  I had been encouraging the more sober and old-fashioned “Grandmother,” thinking I would need all the authority I could get.  But one day, Luca pointed at me and said, “Nana.”  And that was that.  But how to explain the magic of what I have come to call the “grandmother connection”?  How to explain the pure joy this child brings to his Nana? 

 

There is truth in all the old wisdom.  Grandparents are under less pressure than parents because they know they can give baby back to Mom and Dad at the end of the day when they are tired and baby is, too.  Grandparents do not have to worry so much about discipline.  They can spoil their grandkids to their hearts’ delight.  And grandmothers have an added advantage.  Everyone expects them to go crazy over their grandchildren.  No one objects (but everyone laughs) when Nana brings out for the umpteenth time her special little photo album filled with her favorite pictures of Luca.  No one looks too askance when she skips to the lou, rings around the rosie, or goes all around the mulberry bush twenty times in a row.

 

And there is another thing about grandmothers.  Their lives generally are more settled than mothers’ lives are.  They have worked out a pattern, a routine, which allows them more freedom than they may have had when they were younger and their own children were small.  Grandmothers may be as busy as ever, but they have more opportunity to choose what they most want to do.  Mothers have to worry about so many things besides their kids:  husband, work, housework, childcare, meals, endless appointments with doctors, teachers, playgroups, etc., etc.  A grandmother can focus on her grandchildren one hundred percent.  And that is a gift, both for her and her grandchildren.

 

Still, all this is not enough to explain the huge love I feel for my grandson and the bond that has been ours from the very beginning of his life.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that my daughter and I are close.  We think alike about the baby.  We revel together in every new word he says, every new, remarkable, wonderful thing he does.  Seeing my daughter with her son, my grandson, fills me with an incredible sense of perfect completeness.  Perhaps it is because I worked when my daughter was small and missed some of the miracles I enjoy with my grandson.   Or maybe there is some guilt  because I did work and now I'm trying to make up for it.

 

Or maybe it is Luca himself.  He is just so much fun!  He has an outgoing, happy personality and his little smiling face can light up the world.  We dance and sing, we do somersaults, play games, ride on a dragon and take the puppy for a walk.  Everything Luca does, Nana does too, with an enthusiasm that matches his.

 

I suppose there will come a time when Luca's big, bright eyes do not light up quite so much when he sees his Nana.  But I have a feeling that the huge love we share now will always be one of the best and most joyous parts of both of us.