THE NARRATIVE ARC | GRANDPARENTS’ LOVE

Are Grandparents Supposed to Feel This Much Love?

Sometimes it feels like my heart will burst with joy, and sometimes with pain

There’s an old saying,

A mother can only be as happy as her unhappiest child.

For grandparents, this multiplies a hundred times. Nothing can prepare you for the pain and exhilaration you experience as a grandparent.

We love our children

Of course, as a young mother, I adored my children. They are loved still at 47 and 45, but they are lost to their own adult lives, each with three rapidly growing sons.

During the dizzying, exhausting years of keeping my children fed, clothed, educated, and nurtured into decent humans, I remember moments of intense love and a lot of hard work. As they grew, there were breath-stopping dramas, heartbreak and elation. The usual stuff of human existence for families as they age, venture out and create their own futures.

All parents unquestionably feel a great deal of anxiety, worrying about their children’s successes, disappointments, and their safety. We even stress whether we are doing a good job as parents. It is normal in every era to fear about the world's future, to have nightmares about sudden illness, unexpected disasters, and be concerned about the unpredictability of life generally.

Through all of it, we come to believe that the love we have for our children is the biggest, most perfect love a human could feel. After all, we are told parenting is the strongest instinct we possess, supported by the notion that we would if needed, sacrifice our own lives for our children.

However, I can honestly say in hindsight, and without exaggerating, that the fear and anxiety I have for my grandchildren is now greater than anything I felt for their parents as I nursed them to adulthood. Perhaps it has to do with control, or the lack of it, as we weaken with age. Or should we blame fear of the unknown in a world that is changing so rapidly, a world with which even my kids’ generation, Gen X, struggles to keep up?

Do we love our grandchildren more?

So what drives this painful and yet exhilarating passion for our grandchildren? After twenty-two years of experience, I may have figured out an answer to this complex question.

When my oldest grandson, now nearing his 21st year, was a newborn baby, I would take him to a local shopping mall on Saturday mornings. To give my son and his wife a break, do some window shopping, and enjoy a quiet coffee and sandwich at my favourite cafe. My ‘mother’s-mode’ brain seemed to kick in, as all the old ways of managing an infant returned. I had successfully produced two adult, healthy and well-adjusted kids and now a grandchild. Why shouldn’t I feel proud of my achievement?

I was very organised, even bragging that I was a sure-fire ‘baby whisperer’, and prepared for anything. Fresh diapers, bottle and formula, baby car seat, pram in the trunk, extra clothes ‘just in case’. I had done this shopping mall trip twice and everything had gone smoothly. I was happy with our morning excursion, proudly showing off my sweet baby grandson, gleaning attention from old ladies and cooing shop assistants.

When it was time to go, my brain on autopilot, I secured the tiny bundle into his regulation car seat, carefully clicking in the straps, adjusting his squirming little arms and legs so that he was comfortable and safe.

And that is when it happened. Our gaze suddenly connected.

His face was as serious as an ancient mystic, his eyes speaking for generations of lost and forgotten childhoods, and I was captivated. With a sudden awareness I had never felt before, I knew this precious life, at this second, depended upon my complete attention. I was being reminded to care for him with my whole mindful being, with more love than I had ever given to anyone before. And that was a powerful and overwhelming realisation.

I had given my children so much of myself but this feeling was different. It was love on steroids. Not only did a grandchild represent a connection of present generations to the past, but the creation of a future that would stretch well beyond my human existence.

Had I somehow ‘sleepwalked’ through my own children’s lives? I had never given one thought to the deeper meaning of creating a child, let alone the implications of that child, then making another life and so on forever through the future. It was almost too much to comprehend.

The years of raising babies to adulthood had certainly rushed past in a blur of roughly remembered sensations, the memories only coming into vivid focus through piles of swiftly fading Kodak photographs. Piles of Christmases, birthdays, family gatherings and summer vacations that came, went and came again.

It was as if I had blinked and that precious time passed. In truth, there had been moments when I was teaching full-time and trying to cope with all that was demanded when I wished the years away. Years when I longed for my babies to be older, to be teenagers or all grown up and self-sufficient.

And just like that they were.

Staying awake to the pain and the joy

From that moment I understood the powerful connection possible between this tiny baby, and others to come, and myself as their grandmother. I realised the vastness of joys and sorrows that being a grandparent could bring if I stayed awake to it.

Six grandsons later, the power of ‘grandmother love’ can leave me feeling overwhelmed by sadness, but I try to stay in the moment. As the years fly by, I struggle with the idea that I will not be around to see how their lives will unfold. What each one’s individual ‘story’ will be. What the next and then next generation will be like? Who will they resemble? What will their passions be?

In the here and now, I sometimes feel immeasurable sadness. One boy is in a deep hole of depression, desperate for a chance to see clear blue daylight again.

He visits and tells me he is not doing well, that his paternal grandfather bullies him and makes him feel worthless. I pass the information on to his mum, but it’s a difficult situation. Not all grandparents have loving hearts but I think this man is also a victim, from a long chain of victims. His mother organises a therapist, and life rolls on.

I am, at this moment in time, sometimes only as happy as my saddest grandchild. Yet there are also days when I feel overwhelmed by happiness. My son’s oldest boy, the old soul, the one who taught me how to be a grandparent, has suddenly changed his degree, from Physiotherapy to Digital Media.

When he was little, he loved painting and drawing. I took him to weekend art classes, and later he gained entry to a Creative and Performing Arts high school. He saved up and bought a small drone to take wonderful aerial photographs. I never fully understood why he chose Physiotherapy, but he is finally following his heart, and my heart is bursting for him.

Earlier this week I picked up my nine-year-old grandson from school during a very impressive thunderstorm. I walked from the school gate with my enormous umbrella, while he raced to the car, splashing and jumping in puddles like that classic scene from “Singin’ in the Rain.”

His mother would be shouting through the torrential rain for him to shelter under the umbrella. She’d be angry that he was drenched from hair to shoes, but grandparents see the fun in things more, and at that moment in time, I was as ecstatic as my most joyful grandchild.

The ‘Times’ of our lives

My mother is 98. I credit her for getting me through some very tough times, especially months of severe post-natal depression after my son was born. She has a simple philosophy about life.

She believes that everyone has ‘times’ in their lives when they are meant to do or be, whatever they find themselves doing or being; whether a child in school, a young couple in love, a mother with her baby, and so on. That each ‘time’ is to be endured, no matter how difficult or enjoyable, because it will pass, because the next ‘time’ is waiting to happen.

As I accepted my ‘time’ as a new mother, rather than fighting against it, with every rise and fall it brought, the depression disappeared.

Should grandparents feel this much love?

The answer to my title question is “Yes, and be awake to it all, the pain and joy, and don’t waste a minute.”

At the end of the movie “Parenthood,” the grandmother makes a simple but wonderful speech about choosing the rollercoaster over the merry-go-round because, despite the ups and downs, the sickness, the fear, excitement and thrills, it is the most interesting ride, the one you want to do again.

My years as a grandparent so far have taught me to accept every joy and pain that falls my way and to feel it all as deeply as possible. Even if I am terrified of rollercoaster rides.