My family is a classic example of the modern norm: People moving far away from families of origin for school or jobs or other adventures, and then starting their own families in relative isolation from extended relatives. I currently live 500 miles from my parents and air travel isn’t a great option since they live two and a half hours from an airport of significant size. My husband’s parents live on the other side of the country and his siblings are scattered about as far and wide as you can get within the contiguous United States: Seattle, Columbus, Pittsburgh and Austin. I didn’t think much of this situation one way or the other until we had a child.
I have a fantastic relationship with my parents and I’ve always missed them, but now I miss them like crazy. I am insanely jealous of friends who have their parents down the street, in the next town or even within a couple of hours. I fantasize about how much easier my life would be if one of Chester’s grandmas were around to pick him up in a pinch, provide a much needed date night or spend a couple of hours with him so I could get to a yoga class on the weekend. And I’m not just envious of the built-in help that nearby grandparents provide; I’m also jealous of the time spent together and how it nurtures and benefits all the relationships involved.
My mom recently headed home after a wonderful week and a half visit. I had a rather obvious, but profound nonetheless, realization the night before she left. We were having dinner at our neighborhood Thai restaurant. Chester and my mom were laughing and playing on their side of the table, Matt and I were having a pleasant conversation on our side. It felt so natural and normal and good, and it hit me like a ton of bricks, “Wow, this is how it was for the vast majority of history!” (Maybe not eating lemongrass tofu and drinking Singha, but the extended family part.)
While the nuclear-family-in-relative-isolation trend is recent considering the course of human history, I’m not the first generation in my family to do it this way. For most of my childhood, we didn’t live near any of my grandparents either. There was a brief stretch of living two or three doors down the street from my mom’s parents when I was around four years old, and I still remember it, these 30-some years later, as a charmed time.
We lived several states away from my dad’s parents – I can probably count the times I saw my dad’s father on one hand. We only visited my grandma every few summers, and because she ran a bar for a living and slept during the days, I didn’t see her much. When I was eleven years old, we moved to my dad’s hometown where his mother lived. Even then, I only saw her occasionally – mostly on holidays – and we were never close. She came across as judgmental and seemed to care far more about her Daschund than any human-being in her life. As an adult, I’ve heard stories about her – how she spent whole summers as a young girl trekking through the Oregon wilderness on a horse, for example – that make me wish I had gotten to know her better.
I had a close relationship with both of my mom’s parents, but my grandpa Chester and I had a special bond to say the least. The year or two we lived next to them was truly magical for me. I loved being able to run down the street and see my grandpa any time I wanted. I told him secrets. We built towers and cities out of blocks. We played “Barrel of Monkeys,” “High Card Takes the Trick,” and “Go Fish.” We grew pollywogs in my plastic pool. We made trips to A&W for root beer floats. He was particularly fond of taking walks and I was always willing to tag along – he had a way of making a simple jaunt around the neighborhood seem like a grand adventure. To put it simply, my grandpa was the coolest, most fun person in the universe as far as I was concerned. He even had a “hook” instead of a right hand. It was like having the kindest and most loving pirate in the world as my very own grandpa. What could be better than that, for crying out loud?! (Answer: nothing.) He occupied a place in my heart and a status in my mind that no one else could fill, not then and not since.
Me and my Grandpa Chester
When we moved to Brookings, Oregon in 1983, my mom’s parents decided to move there too. Any anxiety I felt about being the new girl, in a new town was completely overshadowed by the excitement of living near my grandpa again. I couldn’t wait to sleep over at their house on the weekends, explore new walking routes and have all sorts of adventures. It was, indeed, as wonderful as I had hoped . . . for a few short months. My opportunity to live near my grandpa again ended tragically and much, much too soon when my grandpa took his own life. After that, my grandma moved to California to be near my uncle. She passed away about five years later when I was in high school. I never got to know her very well – when my grandpa was alive, I was attached at the hip to him. After he died, my grandma was (understandably) depressed. She cried every time she called our house and that was difficult for a self-absorbed teenage girl to handle in an empathetic manner. I got into the habit of passing her off to my mom as quickly as I could when I did end up with one of her calls.
I don’t think a day has gone by in my life that I haven’t thought of and missed my grandpa. The emotions have gone back and forth over the years from shock to confusion to anger to sadness, but mostly I just miss him and wonder what my life and our relationship would have been like had he been around long enough to know me as a teenager, a college student, an adult. I still admire him and hope that he would be proud of me. When I had my son, there was no question that he would be named after his great grandpa. There is a photo in my son’s room of my grandpa wearing his signature cowboy hat. Chester asks about him a lot “Where is his arm?” (Good question. He lost it in a farming accident.) “Was he a cowboy?” (Yes, he was.) “Did he ever see me?” (Sadly, no, he did not.)
Given my relationship with my grandpa Chester, it has been fascinating and emotional to watch the relationship develop between my son Chester and my mom. To say they are “close” is a gross understatement of reality. They are like two peas in a pod. Seeing the two of them together is like watching my own memories – it’s as if they are a reflection, a remnant, a recreation of my grandpa and me. I could just sit and watch them together for hours, and I’d very much like to do it more often than two or three times a year.
Chester and his "Grammy" (aka my mom)
Chester was not happy when my mom left after this most recent visit. He took to calling her “Grammy” during her stay and for days he made tearful demands for her . . .
“Chester, what would you like for dinner?”
“I want my Grammy?!”
“Have a good day at school. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Will Grammy be with you when you pick me up?”
“No, Chester, Grandma had to go home.”
“I want Grammy!”
“OK, Chester it’s time for your bath.”
“I want Grammy!”
“Hey Chester, do you want to watch a movie with me?”
“I want Grammy!”
You get the idea. It has been a little over a week now and he has finally settled back into day-to-day life without “Grammy,” but we all miss her and the easy happiness that seemed to flow when she was here.
Chester doesn’t get to see my parents nearly enough, and he has even fewer opportunities to see Matt’s parents. We live on opposite sides of the country, which makes frequent visits problematic for a number of reasons, both financial and logistical. The times Chester has spent with his “Grandma and Grandpa B” have been truly wonderful. He was immediately drawn to my father-in-law the first time they saw each other when Chester was a year old. I will never forget him sitting in Grandpa B’s lap, pulling and snapping his suspenders over and over again with smiles and giggles of delight. Since our last visit with them a year ago, Grandpa B and Chester have a running joke about potato chips and Chester’s reluctance (OK, downright refusal) to share them.
Matt’s mom is the quintessential grandma in the spoiling sense. If there were such a thing, she would be the undefeated, world champion of doting grandmas. She adores Chester and makes everything all about him (in a beautiful, self-esteem-nurturing way). When we visited them last Thanksgiving, Grandma B kept telling him “Chester, this is YOUR party! This is all for you.” He was eating it up and Matt and I kept shooting each other this-is-really-sweet-but-he-is-going-to-be-unbearable-when-we-go-home looks. One day, while they were snuggled up on the couch together watching a cartoon, she said it again, “Chester, this is YOUR party. You are the STAR!” He thought for a few seconds and said, “If I’m the star, does that mean everybody else is just ornaments?” Now if that isn’t how a grandma is supposed to make you feel, I don’t know what is.
Fortunately, the love runs deep in all directions between Chester and his grandparents; deep enough to translate through cards and emails and phone calls and sharing photos via the internet. I still wish we got to see them all more often and I dream of how wonderful it would be to have them living close by. For now we’re counting the days until we go to “Grammy” and grandpa’s house for Christmas, and I’m not-so-subtly reminding my mom that there are many lovely homes available for sale, right here in our neighborhood.
