A Shadow of My Former Self: How Grandmothers are Different

I’m such a better parent since I stopped raising kids. 

Seriously.  You know how I know this?  Here’s my story.  It’s Saturday morning.  There is a lot to do to get ready for our annual Three Kings celebration – a gathering of families who’ve adopted kids from Nicaragua.  Their kids are now adults and many of them have kids — so now it’s a three-generation thing.  (Read Cousins – there are some terrific pictures of our beautiful kids) 

Anyway…..I’m on a tear to get going.  It being Saturday, we have our little sidekick – our granddaughter, 5 year old Alita.  She is a wonderful kid, dreamy, very soft around the edges, ephemeral.  Fancy way of saying….she is extremely slow.  She finds beauty everywhere.  In lint, the sparkles on her shirt, the conversations of her tiny dinosaurs.  And of course, she is in her own little Zen state as I hurry her out of the shower and guide her to her clothes.

This makes me crazy. 

I point out her clothes and challenge her to a race to get dressed. She says she can’t get dressed because she’s cold.  I tell her that she won’t be cold if she gets dressed.  She looks like she’s going to start crying.  I (nicely) tell her again that getting dressed will solve her problem with being cold.  She drops her towel and starts bawling – now completely naked standing on the bedroom rug near, I just then noticed, a slightly opened window. 

By now, of course, I’ve ratcheted back into mom mode – my sweet grandmotherly patience as cold as my half-drunk coffee.  I am, after all, on a mission to get this damn Three Kings thing going.  I decide, just as I would when I actually had kids around here to parent, that she’s old enough to dress herself, notwithstanding the open window.

“Alita,” I said, lowering my voice and taking a very serious stance just like I used to do when my kids were her age, “it’s time to put your clothes on so we can have breakfast and go to the store.”

Now she is not only naked and cold, she is sobbing.  I crack.  I bend down and ask her, “Why are you crying?  It’s just time to get dressed, honey.”

“Nana, you scared me.”

Oh good grief, I thought.  I have totally gone soft.  Five years old and this kid has never been talked to in a business tone of voice.  I am such a f**king grandmother!

It’s like I’m wearing an apron with stenciled teddy bears and a string of chocolate chip cookies around my neck.  Where am I?  Where’s my edge?

I wasn’t a terrible mother.  I just wasn’t really terrific.  OK, honestly, I was a little bossy.  If this tells you something, when I got my three teenagers cell phones, the oldest one programmed them all to make Reveille the ring tone when I called.

Once when I was furious at all of them after a ridiculously uncooperative visit to the doctor (you take three kids at once to the doctor and then talk to me), my loud lecturing in the car prompted a guy who pulled up next to me at the light to shout out the window, “Lighten up, lady.”  You don’t have to ask what I replied, do you?

So naturally I’ve been thinking – would my kids have turned out better if I had been a nicer person?  But then I think – hey, they turned out ok and plus, they’re very, very tough.  I take credit for that.  I do.

Now little Alita?  I guess toughening her up will need to be somebody else’s job.