On becoming a Grandparent…

Happy Grandparents Day 2021.

I’m not a grandma yet – still have about 3 weeks to go before the blessed event – and it is a blessed event! There’s something so magical about your baby having a baby. I simply can’t wait to be a grandmother – much like I couldn’t wait to be a mom.

Back then, when I was 29, having a baby was an exciting, and in some instances, fearful time.

Becoming a grandmother at 61, I find I am experiencing the same emotions of excitement and fear. The fear is founded. Anything can go wrong during a birth, even if the woman is healthy and hale, as my daughter is. But I don’t want to dwell on the fear today. I want to express the excitement – and if I’m being honest with myself – a little self indulgence as well.

When my daughter told us she was pregnant I screamed, fell to my knees, and started sobbing, uncontrollably. Why? At the time I hadn’t a clue in a cardboard box, but it was such an emotional release I don’t think I stopped smiling for a week afterward.

Now, with the arrival date imminent, I think I can understand why I reacted the way I did.

First, I was so happy for my daughter and her husband. They were supposed to get married in a huge to-do in May of 2020 and had to -of course – postpone the wedding because of Covid. The huge reception ( 400 people) is still on tap for May 2022 now, but they wanted to be married, so in a small church ceremony with only a few family members, they wed a year ago, today, so Happy Anniversary to them.

Both of them are over the age of 30 and I knew they both wanted children. I thought they were going to wait until after the reception, but they figured, “why not now? We’re married, legally, so…”

I truly can not wait to be a grandmother. I’m thrilled I’m still young and healthy enough to experience having a baby that isn’t mine but that is related to me and be able to hold it in my arms, play, feed, and cuddle it whenever I want.

I truly can not wait to see how my daughter is going to be as a mother. We all think we will never say/do the things our own mothers did – that classic mother/daughter angst dynamic — but in the long run, we find ourselves doing and saying if not all the same things, many of them. It will be interesting in coming years to possibly hear things come out of her mouth she swore she’d never say as a mother because I said them, or do things she vowed never to do, again for the same reason.

Since I didn’t have a great role model for a grandmother – too strict, too mean, alcoholic – I intend to be the antithesis of that for my grandchild. I won’t say I’ll be indulgent because I respect my daughter’s rules and requests on things ( like no sugar, junk food, etc) but I will be loving, caring, strict with a smile, and of course, present. My grandmother never was present even when she and I were the only people in a room. In truth, she didn’t like my mother much so that trickled down to me since I was her child.

Family dynamics will kill you every time, kids.

But…

Not me. I WANT to be in the child’s life. I WANT to experience the things my grandmother never wanted to because she couldn’t be bothered. I ALREADY love this child and I haven’t even met it yet. I WANT to do all the things I loved doing with my own daughter and which I know she loved as well. I want to be a positive influence on the child, impart whatever wisdom I can ( and have) and I want the child to know and experience love. Complete, all encompassing love.

So.

Happy Grandparents Day to all the GP’s out there already, and those like me, the soon-to-bes.