Unlike many women entering middle age, I've never pined for grandchildren. When I'd tell someone the ages of my kids and they'd say, "I'll bet you can't wait to be a grandma!" I'd give a lukewarm smile and say, "Oh, yes I can." Don't get me wrong, I think babies are perfectly nice people; I've just never pictured myself as grandmother material.
Me, someone's grandma? Hard to picture. Grandmothers are bakers of cookies, knitters of sweaters--they have open arms and warm, expansive laps. My cookie baking is limited to maybe one batch of Toll House cookies per year, and that's in a good year.
Knitting? My friend Kathleen, a woman of saintly patience, attempted to instruct left-handed me in that cozy art. I eked out a bumpy length of yellow yarn and promptly abandoned the whole enterprise.
Open arms? Maybe. Warm, expansive lap? Expansive, for sure. At any rate, I wasn't itching to become anyone's "grammy" any time soon. I still watch cartoons, for heaven's sake. I consider Lucky Charms an acceptable dinner. I swear too much, crass humor cracks me up, and I'd wear pajamas in public if I could get away with it. Does this sound like the definition of a grandma to you?
So I was amazed by how explosively overjoyed I was when Jessica, my older daughter, told me that she and her boyfriend, Josey, are expecting a baby next June. I squealed. I hugged Jess. I hugged Josey. I ran out and bought these adorable little rattles that can be Velcro'd to a baby's itty bitty wrists.
Suddenly, everything itty bitty captivated me: tiny socks, fuzzy sleepers, miniature teddy bears, round little hats made to fit snugly on round little heads. I went from zero to grandma in the blink of an eye. Melissa, my younger daughter, couldn't believe it. "You're more excited than I am," she said. And that's saying something, as Melissa melts in the presence of any baby, from humans to tadpoles.
I'm pretty perplexed about this myself. In recent years I've watched with bemusement as my friends bubbled with excitement over the impending arrival of a grandchild. Trying to imagine feeling that way myself felt as foreign as imagining a trip to Paris. A nice idea, but too far out of the realm of my experience to conceive of it as a reality. Inexplicably, I find myself bubbling, beaming and wishing I could push time along a little faster.
I'm done worrying about being a grandmother prototype. It's occurred to me that some of my best friends are grandmas, and not one of them are the soft spoken, white haired, "Come give Grandma a kiss, dearie," variety. The grandmas I hang with are Rollerblading, marathon running, computer repairing, office managing, loud laughing, outspoken forces of nature. They love their grandchildren ferociously, but their lives aren't a series of colorless days brightened only when the little ones come galloping into the house. My friends seamlessly balance grandmothering with living their own already fulfilling lives.
This baby will be central in my life, but it won't be the center of my life. That's the miraculous, exhausting, surprising, enriching, frustrating, overwhelming, wondrous job of its parents. I get to be a twinkly satellite. And this satellite has big plans.
There likely won't be afternoons spent baking in my kitchen, and I won't be whipping up any chunky little sweaters. But there will be instruction in the fine art of blowing bubbles--huge, wobbly ones that silently burst on a blade of grass, and tiny, shimmering clouds of bubbles lifted up and away on the breeze. First lesson: Blow outward at the bubble wand, don't inhale.
I'll tune up my storybook voices for excursions with Grover to "The Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum" and into the many happily chaotic worlds of Dr. Seuss. We'll dance with carefree abandon to rock music and eat popcorn and veggies for dinner.
We'll pet my doggies oh so gently so they don't jump up to find a more peaceful napping place. We'll giggle. We'll cuddle. We'll nap together on my bed. He or she will think I'm the greatest, funnest, craziest grandma ever. I will love and be loved as I've never loved or been loved before.
It all makes sense to me now. After laboring to give birth, enduring colic, leaky diapers, sleepless nights, separation anxiety (yours and theirs), multiplication tables, gory skinned knees, and the tempest-tossed storms of adolescence, you are rewarded with this itty bitty (oh, itty bitty!) person to love, snuggle, sing to, spoil rotten, and hand back to the parents when you've had enough.
Yes, I think I've got this grandma thing down.
Deb Pascoe of Marquette is a freelance writer and a peer recovery coach for Child and Family Services of the U.P. A former columnist for The Mining Journal, her book, "Life With a View ," a collection of her past columns, is available in area bookstores.