MARCH NEWSLETTER

GRANDPARENTING

My friend Susan came home from meeting her step grandchild. I could feel her glow through the phone as she described how the little girl ran up to her crying, "Hello Grandma!" Hello grandma, the sweetest music! My ten month old grandbaby, Nai'a Rose, lights up whenever she sees me. Sometimes she is so overcome with joy she gives me her version of a mouth kiss. She puts her mouth on mine and stands there. Pure rapture.

In traditional cultures the grandparents are in charge of raising the young. The able bodied parents who are in their prime are needed to work in the fields, to build and to keep the wolves from the door. The elders are slower, less physically vital but wiser from their years. Their wisdom provides spiritual and practical counsel which they use in raising the next generation and in their capacity as guides for the group. Retirement is not an option. Everybody does their share for the group until the end. Everyone is important and vital to the group.

In our culture the parents also work in their fields, build and keep the wolves from the door. In addition they maintain the home and raise the children. The children go to school but are not expected to contribute to the well being of the family. When they become young adults they go off and raise their own families. The elders rattle around in big houses or small nursing home rooms or senior communities surrounded by other elders. Each age group is separated. Each age group is fending for themselves.

In "A Man without a Country" Kurt Vonnegut writes, "A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It's a terribly vulnerable survival unit." I'm afraid that is what we have created in the West and everyone suffers from this arrangement. It is insane and yet we continue on with this ill conceived plan. It's time to challenge this arrangement and get creative about alternatives.

In our cultural mythology grandparents have been reduced to bringers of candy. They have become expendable visitors who are either sweet and innocuous or meddlesome and tolerated. Many elders retire only to find they are lonely. Some enjoy their retirement but, as the sands of time run out, are alone without someone to care for them at the end. As a culture we do not revere our elders.

Houston Smith talks about growing up in China where great respect is paid to age. He talks about how his mother was prematurely gray. This worked in her favor in China. Her thoughts and opinions were taken more seriously. To be old in our culture is not venerated or sexy and the elders have not, in many cases, taken their wisdom years seriously. Relegated to foolish, useless archetypes they have met these expectations with bumper stickers reading, "I'm spending my children's inheritance", and indeed they are, both financially and in terms of the Earth's resources. Many elders have forgotten that we are the stewards of the planet. We try to return to younger days with drugs and cosmetics and surgeries that enhance our sexual allure and capacity. Instead of taking our jobs seriously as guardians of the planet we are hanging on to our reproductive years and failing miserably.

Grandparenting is a wonderful opportunity to revisit our parenting years without the primary responsibility and with deeper, time tested vision. It is an opportunity to give love and teach more wisely than we did during our busy middle years. We can become a vital force in our family's life if we are willing to give without being in control of the situation. If we can respect the primary role of the parents and use our power quietly and gently we can make a great difference in our families. To do so we need to develop tact, respect for our children, skills in forgiving and conflict resolution and respect for our own life skills and capacity to love. We need to remember that we are the elders and that this is a great honor. Perhaps then our culture will awaken from its amnesia and create new, sustainable models of family.

Jacqueline