My 6-month-old granddaughter lies on her back in the grass on a partly cloudy day. Intermittent sparkles of sunshine dance on her face as, with her left hand, she twists to reach for a dandelion growing by her right shoulder.
Stretch, stretch, stretch and … suddenly she has rolled over from back to front for the first time.
“Atta girl,” I croon and clap my hands, elated.
Not a remarkable moment, really. A common occurrence for a mother or grandmother — watching a child physically develop right before one’s eyes.
But the mother/grandmother contrast jumps out at me. It is not where my granddaughter is in her state of development, but where I am in my state of mind.
The contrast is so strong that a little “lecture” starts forming in my brain — a message from the grandmother I am now to the mother I was then.
I am here. Truly present. As the grandmother I am now, I am not thinking of my next deadline (though I still have them) or what my next big career or political move will be.
I’m no longer torn by the tension of personal ambition and the desire for a child’s perfect trajectory toward the next stage. For this moment, the nitty gritty of everyday life simply disappears.
The news of the world, bad as usual, drifts from the radio and I ignore it. My cellphone rings. I glance at the number and shut it off.
This interlude with my granddaughter is mine alone, not even to be shared with my dearest friend.
It is the same sense of “presence” I feel with my three grandsons. One, age 5, wants to play endless “Wizard of Oz” games. He, of course, is the wizard and, thrilled that my real name is “Dorothy,” has renamed my dog Toto. Up and down the stairs the three of us bound, from “Kansas” on the first floor to “Oz” in the basement.
Another, age 7, climbs every tree in sight while I stand below, forbidding him certain unsafe branches, but then patiently going on to the next tree, and the next, and the next … . The sun starts to set in the West, but I don’t look at my watch.
The third, age 4, is no longer satisfied with books being read, but wants stories being told. “Chapter stories” he says. So each time we meet, we go on to another chapter in the monster-chasing adventures of his “gang of four” playmates. We are now on Chapter 10.
It has become cliché, but still true, to say that one of the best things about grandkids is that you can send then home, then viola! Responsibility over. What is less often said but even more true is that the purity of uncluttered moments we have with them is the real joy.
So from the grandmother I am now to the mother I was then, I start to say, “Why didn’t you enjoy your own kids this much?”
But the mother I was interrupts, “Give me a break! How could I? Parenting is about being a parent, not a playmate. And parenting is rude enough to come at the same time as career-building, marriage-sustaining, financial obsessing, schedule-jockeying, other family and friends demanding … . What was I supposed to do?”
The grandmother I am retorts, “Give me a break! I’m not criticizing you for the decisions you made — going to work, taking on politics, going off on an occasional solo trip. It’s not the physical absences from your kids when you were gone that makes me sad; it’s the mental absences when you were there.
“Your kids didn’t suffer much from your mind clutter, but you did! Unless there was a crisis, you often weren’t paying attention, and you missed so much of the fun!”
“Yes,” says the mother I was. Then a wistful, almost pleading look comes into her eyes. “And my time with them went so fast… .”
Dottie Lamm, former first lady of Colorado, is a mother of two and a grandmother of four.
