Been There, Done That: Possessed!
Richt now, I'm sitting on our front sidewalk trying to write because my two-year-old granddaughter, Madden, has just told me that the two rocking chairs on the porch are "MINE!"
Okay, go ahead and be snotty and criticize, but I've been babysitting since eight this morning and I no longer remember what is normal for me and what isn't. There are tiny plastic farm animals all over the kitchen floor, which you know I'm going to step right on that pad under my toes where it really kills; and most of the petals are off the three flowers we had left in the front.
We've had poppy diapers, which I stuck my finger in, and the only thing I've been able to get her to eat is a leftover packet of roasted almonds from a Wendy's salad bowl. Let's just say she's two and let it go at that.
Being a babysitting grandma is a hydra-headed monster--one minute everything seems so circle of life, and the next, it all feels like a babysitting job when you were 13 and you thought those people were never coming home.
Why am I acting this way? I normally like to think of myself as a sophisticated, slightly mean person, only barely saved from being an actual New Yorker by the fact that I've only been to New York twice and really only know what it's like from TV. Of course, I look like a slightly dumpy middle-aged woman with a convenient haircut. No one really knows about the New Yorker thing but me.
But I have been possessed by the spirit of grand-mothering and, as such, have become a useless blob unable to discriminate between good and bad behavior in any effective way. Also, in the back of my head, there is a ghost-like figure reminding me that this is the last chance I have in the world of not having my children hate me.
I keep saying to myself that nobody hates a grandma. The worst anyone ever says is that they're eccentric I have hardly every heard anyone say, "My grandma was a real witch," to use a little Halloween terminology.
So there's a level at which I'm afraid to be mean to my grandkids and as a result, I get smashed sometimes. Sometimes literally. A couple of years ago, I told my six-year-old granddaughter to jump on me to wake me up in the morning.
This was on a blow-up mattress in the middle of the living room. Well, she took me at my word and jumped on me at six o'clock the morning. Had she been her father, I would have been a little less cheerful than I was with my granddaughter, to say the least.
Actually, part of it is being afraid to be mean, and part of it is not feeling that mean anymore. So much for the tightly-wound New Yorker theory. You know how you sort of fade as you get older? Your face starts to get a little mushy, your waistline isn't a line anymore so much as a border between your top and bottom. That's what's happening to my mean, don't tread on me part.
I don't know how this theory is going to work when I have 16 grandkids, if I ever actually have 16 or 24 or whatever, like the really professional grandma's I know. I only know that i'm still charmed looking at the face of someone I remember vaguely as being a part of my youth, something that was so long ago that it's starting to seem like a good part of my life. Not the exhausted, crazed, strung out years that I actually experienced as I tried to raise my five kids. Just as an aside, it just occured to me LAST YEAR that if I would have only had two kids, just two, I would have had a lot more money and a nicer house. I don't know why I never connected these two things until then, it's probably good for my last three kids that I didn't.
Now I find myself thinking that things like sitting on the sidewalk writing are funny. And ridiculous. And I don't care that, in the end, I've become something of a sap for my grandkids.
It's kind of nice not having to carry the banner of self-respect quite so high and proudly as I did when I was young. Certainly less tiring.
Okay, go ahead and be snotty and criticize, but I've been babysitting since eight this morning and I no longer remember what is normal for me and what isn't. There are tiny plastic farm animals all over the kitchen floor, which you know I'm going to step right on that pad under my toes where it really kills; and most of the petals are off the three flowers we had left in the front.
We've had poppy diapers, which I stuck my finger in, and the only thing I've been able to get her to eat is a leftover packet of roasted almonds from a Wendy's salad bowl. Let's just say she's two and let it go at that.
Being a babysitting grandma is a hydra-headed monster--one minute everything seems so circle of life, and the next, it all feels like a babysitting job when you were 13 and you thought those people were never coming home.
Why am I acting this way? I normally like to think of myself as a sophisticated, slightly mean person, only barely saved from being an actual New Yorker by the fact that I've only been to New York twice and really only know what it's like from TV. Of course, I look like a slightly dumpy middle-aged woman with a convenient haircut. No one really knows about the New Yorker thing but me.
But I have been possessed by the spirit of grand-mothering and, as such, have become a useless blob unable to discriminate between good and bad behavior in any effective way. Also, in the back of my head, there is a ghost-like figure reminding me that this is the last chance I have in the world of not having my children hate me.
I keep saying to myself that nobody hates a grandma. The worst anyone ever says is that they're eccentric I have hardly every heard anyone say, "My grandma was a real witch," to use a little Halloween terminology.
So there's a level at which I'm afraid to be mean to my grandkids and as a result, I get smashed sometimes. Sometimes literally. A couple of years ago, I told my six-year-old granddaughter to jump on me to wake me up in the morning.
This was on a blow-up mattress in the middle of the living room. Well, she took me at my word and jumped on me at six o'clock the morning. Had she been her father, I would have been a little less cheerful than I was with my granddaughter, to say the least.
Actually, part of it is being afraid to be mean, and part of it is not feeling that mean anymore. So much for the tightly-wound New Yorker theory. You know how you sort of fade as you get older? Your face starts to get a little mushy, your waistline isn't a line anymore so much as a border between your top and bottom. That's what's happening to my mean, don't tread on me part.
I don't know how this theory is going to work when I have 16 grandkids, if I ever actually have 16 or 24 or whatever, like the really professional grandma's I know. I only know that i'm still charmed looking at the face of someone I remember vaguely as being a part of my youth, something that was so long ago that it's starting to seem like a good part of my life. Not the exhausted, crazed, strung out years that I actually experienced as I tried to raise my five kids. Just as an aside, it just occured to me LAST YEAR that if I would have only had two kids, just two, I would have had a lot more money and a nicer house. I don't know why I never connected these two things until then, it's probably good for my last three kids that I didn't.
Now I find myself thinking that things like sitting on the sidewalk writing are funny. And ridiculous. And I don't care that, in the end, I've become something of a sap for my grandkids.
It's kind of nice not having to carry the banner of self-respect quite so high and proudly as I did when I was young. Certainly less tiring.
Comments