Grandparents.com columnist Adair Lara is the author of The Granny Diaries: An Insider's Guide for New Grandmothers (Chronicle, 2007). An author, writing teacher, and a former San Francisco Chronicle columnist, she and her husband live in San Francisco, three blocks from the grandchildren.
So now we have Grandparents Day. One of those stealth holidays that no one actually knows about, like Air Force Day.
What can I reasonably expect on this, my new special day? After all, Maggie is only 6, and her sister, Ryan, only 8. What can I look forward to getting from these two adorable, yet unemployed persons? Another badly spelled, if still sincere, love letter? Allow me to pull an old one at random from my file:
Dear Bobby,
I rily mist you. But I am glad we are to gether now. I made up a song I hopo you will lice it I rilly love you and I love the berds.
Love Ryan
See? And it was written on the back of a Xeroxed poem I'd been missing for weeks.
And suppose they were to call instead of writing a card? I would be interrupted in the midst of some very grown-up task, like trying to refinance a house I was an idiot to buy, only to hear this:
"Bobbie? This is Ryan."
(Lots of hissing from background: "Tell her Happy Grandparents Day!")
"Bobbie, Mom says to tell you Happy Groundhog Day. Maggie wants to talk to you. Bye!"
"HI, Bob!" (Maggie thinks it's droll to call me that.) "Those feathers you bought me in the salon fell out in the creek. Ryan wants to talk to you. Bye!"
It's Our Time
But I am a bona fide grandmother, and it's only fair for me to get GP Day – Mother's Day got hijacked by my mother and my mother-in-law, and then passed directly to my daughter, without a stop at my door.
And grandparents ought to be honored.
I had no idea this was true until I became one myself. I had only one grandmother, and she wore a white braid around her head and drank vodka and called me by my twin's name as often as not. Now I see that we are pretty damn important in the life of a child. A lot of us are raising grandchildren (having had a chance to study our mistakes on the first go-round). Others are fighting state by state for the right to see our grandchildren when the parents cut us off.
As Penelope Leach said, we are "the fourth leg" of the family table – we're there to stop it from wobbling.
We are there with a check for the after-school program. We get caught with a closet full of little dresses when the girls announce they are only wearing pants from now on. The cheapest among us won't blink at $13 for each feather the girls have to have in their hair. We're the ones who, knowing that 18 months will be 18 years in an eye-blink, have set up the college accounts for kids who haven't even learned to read yet.
Small children soon find out that their parents tell fibs, forget to pack them lunch, raise their voices, and do not always have time to give the new scrape on their knee the attention they desire. Parents are distracted, with a thousand claims on their attention, and then the car crunches down the driveway and, thank God, there's Grandma, go with Grandma. Bye-bye!
Time-Givers and Secret-Keepers
A grandmother has set the time aside, and is likely to be totally at the child's disposal. What a feeling for a kid! A whole grown-up, with a car and a wallet, who is theirs for the afternoon. On my weekly afternoon with Maggie and Ryan, I'll stand at the door of Maggie's first-grade classroom at 1:50, searching across all the blond heads until I spot her, and then I wait for her to see me, Bobbie in jeans, her backpack on, and the dog in the car – so I can see her face light up. Then it's down the steps to the third grade to get Ryan – easier to pick out since the pink swatch I paid to have put in her long brown hair is still intact . Last week, we splashed far up a shadowy San Anselmo creek with two dogs until we found a rope swing, and then played on it for an hour.
And no, we won't tell you where the swing is. Grandmothers are excellent repositories for secrets, a trait that will be useful in the teen years to come, when the girls storm out of their mother's house and know exactly where to go, because it's the one place where they have always had their own room, or corner, or drawer. Grandma's house. Their drawings festoon her walls, their lunch bottles clutter her pantry, and the giant stuffed Pegasus they refuse to get rid of takes up a whole shelf in her den.
Grandparenthood is a contract, an unbreakable one because value has been given and received – they love you, and you promise to love them and be there for them forever. The fourth leg is not allowed to wander away from the table – because if it did, what would there be to prevent it all from crashing down?
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