Exhibit A:
For my niece’s upcoming sixth birthday party, her grandmother (my sister’s mother-in-law) has taken on the virtually impossible task of transforming this tiny, fairylike little girl into an enormous three-tiered cake. For her party, my niece wants to wear a bright red cherry-shaped hat with a green stem and leaves made of pipe cleaners. Her arms and legs, she insists, must emerge from a big round cake “iced” in white and decorated with blue and green piping.
“Hy moet só vet wees, Ouma”, hy moet só vet wees” she keeps telling her granny, arms akimbo as she indicates the exact proportion of the cake-costume’s desired circumference around her waist. So Ouma is dutifully doing the calculations and measurements and figuring out how to make her granddaughter’s birthday wish come true.
Exhibit B:
When my eldest daughter was about five years old, she set her sights on a Little Bo Peep costume. She drew her inspiration from a well-thumbed book of nursery rhymes, which featured a rather buxom Bo (disturbingly, the illustration put me in mind of a character from a Henry Fielding novel … quite the saucy serf, if you catch my drift). My mother accepted the challenge without reservation and sewed two (thankfully, age-appropriate) Bo Peep dresses – one for each of my daughters – and two adorable mob caps. Plus a miniature version of the ensemble for Daughter Number Three, who was then just a baby. My father, equally game to oblige, spent hours bending a stick and attaching ribbons to it to match the staff that was so coquettishly brandished by the bodacious Bo in the picture. Cutest little shepherdesses you’ve ever seen!
Exhibit C:
Just recently, my mother-in-law achieved a similarly impressive grand-maternal feat when she designed and made three gorgeous reproductions of Princess Elsa’s dress from the Disney Frozen movie – fully accessorised with detachable cloaks, gloves and real tiaras. My three princesses are in Little-girl Heaven, as you can imagine.
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
I can rattle off examples of grandparental interventions like these until the cows have come home and Bo Peep has successfully rounded up all her sheep. To me, there can be no higher expression of love than the selfless efforts on an elderly* grandparent’s part to put a smile on a little one’s face. It’s a testament not only to their devotion to the grandchild in question, but feels to me like an amplification of their love for their own adult child too.
I grew up without grandparents. A combination of death, distance and, on my mom’s side, family disagreements meant that my parents brought their five children up without much involvement from their families. Incredibly, they did so without ever resorting to drink! To me, my grandparents seemed to exist only in stern black and white photos, in the dusty family Bible or my parents’ even dustier anecdotes; these ancestors had little bearing on my young life.
So it was a revelation to discover, when my girls were born, the special, gentle love that can exist between grandchild and grandparent; and to witness the abundance of joy that my parents added to my children’s lives (and vice versa). Like having children, it was a whole new dimension of existence that I’d never understood or appreciated before.
The knowledge that someone loves my three daughters as deeply (albeit it very differently) as I love my children is a beautiful boon. I know that the role of grandparents differs from culture to culture and that it has changed dramatically over the years. And I know, for a multitude of reasons, that it is not always possible for grandparents to share in their grandchildren’s everyday lives. I see more and more grandparents being left behind as families in my peer group choose to live overseas, for example. But for me, to have grandparents that are as involved in their grandchildren’s lives and are as dedicated to their grandkids’ wellbeing as my parents were to mine, just feels like the way our children are meant to be raised.
My father passed away five years ago, my mother just a few months ago. I miss them every day, not just in their role as my parents but as the devoted grandparents of my children and nieces and nephews. They were a support and a sounding board to me and my siblings as we grappled with some of the complexities of parenting, and they were a source of unconditional love and security for my children. Fortunately, my husband and I are blessed that his parents are as involved with our children and as supportive of them as my own parents were – and we’re even more privileged that his own grandmother survives to play a role in our family as well. Our lives are richer and more meaningful for it.
I am so grateful for the gift of grandparents and I salute great – as in “awesome” – grandparents everywhere. Now don’t even get me started on how cool cousins are …
*Disclaimer: I use the term “elderly” for dramatic effect and would like to assure my mom-in-law that it does not apply to her in any way whatsoever.
** Amanda Spohr is a Reputation Management Executive at BrightRock.
Leave a Reply