How often have I heard, “My grandmother was my hero. The impact that she had on my life will stay with me forever.” And when I Google “grandparent influence on grandchildren,” I am shocked by the huge number of adults claiming that their grandparents deeply influenced their beliefs and values.
Wow.
Ed and I are grandparents, and we love this role. When we’re with one or both of our two grandsons, we put aside everything else we’re doing. We listen. We dote on them, and love them unconditionally. We care about every detail of their lives.
But when I hear stories about the profound influence people have had on the lives of their grandchildren, I feel woefully inadequate. I don’t feel like I’m leaving any kind of grand legacy that will impact the rest of their lives.
I can’t help but wonder if this is the same sort of hype that makes less-than-perfect parents feel inadequate if they don’t live up to the supposedly ideal parenting models all around them. Or the potentially gross distortions about “healthy, happy families” that leave us feeling hopelessly incompetent in our intimate relationships if we don’t seem to measure up to these extremely high standards.
Today, Ed and I are taking our two grandsons on a weeklong cruise to Alaska. The most anticipated adventure of that trip for the boys, dogsledding on a glacier, was cancelled a month ago because of global warming and thus glacier melting. Judging by my strong reaction to the cancellation, you might have thought that the whole trip had been nixed.
I want them to have a great time.
In fact, I’m becoming more aware that this is my highest intention as a grandparent: Just to be there and to do whatever I can to provide a loving, respectful presence that includes occasional safe and joyful adventures to further brighten their young lives.
Does that make me an inconsequential grandparent? Maybe so. But if I am remembered for bringing joy to their lives, I will consider my grand-parenting efforts worthwhile.
I’ve read that many grandparents drastically underestimate the impact they can have on their grandchildren. By contrast, I would like to suggest that it’s far riskier (and dare I add, fundamentally narcissistic) to overestimate how much influence we can have on those precious young lives.
So.
No grand legacy. No major lessons. Just love and joy.
I don’t think it’s for us to determine what our legacy is to another person. It’s probably influenced by their life experiences beyond us. But I get what you are saying about comparing the hype to what we see around us.
As a grandmother to my young grandson and grand daughter, I too have often pondered what, if any, influence I and my husband Doug may have on them.
If past media and television are to be believed; we are to be a combination of Aunt Bee, the Waldon family elders, an older dose of Mary Poppins and a wise sage like version of Yoda.
Far be it from me or my husband to measure up to all that.
I look instead at the relationship I had with my own grandparents. What do I feel are my engrained lessons from them? My grandfather was a rather foreboding man, an alcoholic who was not allowed into my sister’s and my life much. When we did see him he smelled of cigars, gave strong hugs and shiny round silver dollars. I collected them in a shoe box which I still had when I started college where they came in very handy.
From him I learned to be extremely leary of large imposing men but I also learned the value of hard earned money and how to save a buck.
My grandmother was the soft pliable one. She rode the greyhound bus from Oakland to the east bay to stay at our home two nights every other week. I adored her. Unlike my bigger than life, very fun yet very authoritarian mother…grandmother was gentle. She let me touch the velvety folds of skin under her chin, tirelessly read stacks and stacks of picture books to my sister and I. We would parade all evening in our mothers square dancing costumes and heavy Woolworth’s jewelry and grandmother always applauded and admired.
I would sit under the ironing board while she pressed my dad’s shirts , her eyes glued to episodes of The Secret Storm and Guiding Light. She’d memorized every morsel about each character and every plot detail. Through her I discovered a love of storyline, scene building and dynamic plot twists.
She was hooked on Laurence Welk and we never missed an episode. I knew all the main singers and bands…especially dancer Bobby who I had a crush on for years. Grandmother will always remain entrenched in my heart.
Doug’s two grandmothers were still alive when we met. One didnt like me from the get go. I was “that girl” he was spending all his hard earned college money on. I never did measure up. In fact at this moment I cant even recall her name but the other one…Edith was a tiny wiry burst of exuberance. The entire clan of Doug’s family admired how she had worked hard all her life but remained cheerful and grateful to the end. She laughed often and sang joyously
, Camptown Races her favorite song and Skipbo her favorite card game. She lived to be 100.
None of these human beings were in my life daily. They did not raise me my parents did. They did not have high powered careers and none of them had much money. Not a one was famous in any remarkable way except in our eyes.
What about them as grandparents has stuck? I believe it was their unconditional love. Their authenticity and realness. Their frailties….especially those. Most definitely I have learned compassion from their flaws.
If these are the lessons Doug and I’ve gained from our very simple unassuming grandparents, then I figure my own grandchildren will glean a similar legacy from Doug and I. It’s not our job to wow them. If we offer these two cherished souls our love, our joy in life, our compassion and wisdom…that will be enough. If they remember us warmly in their hearts after we are gone, we will have done our job…what more can possibly matter?
Oh, dear Robin. This should be a published story! Soooooo touching. Love, joy, compassion I can do. Wisdom? Dunno. But I’m going to give it my best shot!!!
Thanks Marlena coming from you I take that as a real compliment! Robin
Thanks, Sylvia. Those are wise words. Let us not be the ones who try to determine what we leave behind.
Thanks so much, Marlena, for the writing you posted today! One sentence really spoke to me. I copied and paste here: “Just to be there and to do whatever I can to provide a loving, respectful presence that includes occasional safe and joyful adventures to further brighten their young lives.” We just had 14 of our 15 grandkids here for a week during the local Threshing Days celebration. It was almost overwhelming! Often I wondered if I was being a “good grandma” as I kept the dishwasher filled, running, and emptied at least twice a day! I treasure all the little tidbits of interacting with them. One grand-daughter told me she hopes we don’t move away from here until her 5 month old baby sister has the opportunity to create a memory of having been here, too! I never knew my dad’s mother (died when he was 3.) But I well remember Grandma Elisabeth Schmidt! She was not demonstrative – I don’t remember hugs and kisses. But as I (and she) grew older, I realized the wonderful influence she had had on my life. Thanks, too, to Robin and Sylvia for their meaningful words! AB
Aw. I just love your comment, AB! I’m so sorry I never really got to know Grandma Schmidt. In fact, I have no grandparent role models. Maybe that’s part of the reason I sometimes feel a bit insecure about it.
I think if your grandsons look at the picture of you four about to cruise to Alaska, they will see the joy and love on your faces. What a fantastic experience for them right now and over the years as they remember this and other adventures with you.
I too have had some misgivings about the grandparent role. Am I fun enough, interesting enough, caring enough, teaching and modeling enough, worthy enough. We have only two, (AB how do you keep up with 15 !) boy-girl twins who just turned 16 and who live 750 miles from us, so we don’t have that frequent, ongoing influence. Truly it was easier to feel connected when they were much younger. . . .take them into your lap, read to them, play with them. Now when we visit we can get about two days of their interest before peer time takes precedence. We understand. But we do adore them and treasure them. Emails, texts, Instagram, phone do help the connection somewhat.
My husband was the only grandchild in the family for 8 years and had all four grandparents in the same town doting on him and fostering his strong self-esteem. That also provided him with strong role models, and he is a secure wonderful grandparent. In contrast, I had only two grandparents I saw infrequently and who did not speak English. I cannot say they were a strong influence on me, but at least not negative. I think you’re on track Marlena–to be a loving, respectful presence, to bring joy into their lives. That’s pretty good.
“Am I fun enough, interesting enough, caring enough, teaching and modeling enough, worthy enough.”
Exactly! Thanks for articulating this so well, Pat.
I do wonder how much not having had strong connections to our own grandparents affect our grand-parenting (and our feelings about grand-parenting).
Grandchildren—they bring joy to my life. I like being with them and trying to join their lives in ways that have continued to evolve over time. What legacy, if any, that will leave as they look back in the years to come—right now that is a mystery.
My mother’s silence about her childhood seemed to me very potent. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t speak of it, if asked, but her early life was never offered up as foundation story or homily. That early assimilationist zeal had perhaps left its legacy in how we lived then—we were making ourselves up, not of recycled materials, but from shinier, improved resources—a suitable ethos for the pioneering 19. A plastic Christmas tree was hauled from a cupboard each December, my parents bought a two-story blond brick, the double garage became a rumpus room and my siblings and I dreamed of conversation pits and a pebblecreted in-ground pool. The grandparents visited, but I can’t recall any photos or stories of those who had preceded them. Years later, once I learned of their existence, I wanted my German great-grandparents, magically transported, with all their rituals intact. I wanted the tablecloths and the Friday night menorah, even if they were blank and unyielding as a synthetic tree. I had no wish for religion, but for a more reverent sense of occasion, for the mystical resonance of Walter Benjamin’s aura, which had surely adhered to those ritual objects. Perhaps, with a writer’s avidity even then, what I wanted most was the stories they housed. This was, of course a classic nostalgic reconstruction, a longing in which, as Susan Stewart writes, “the present is denied and the past takes on an authenticity of being.” Ironically, Stewart notes, this can only be achieved through narrative. But certain stories had fallen deliberately silent, for they were almost unbearably tragic and utterly without redemption.
Thanks! And I would add…if the past is denied, the present cannot take on an authenticity of being…