My son called to tell me the test results were in, and I’m a grandmother. Cause for celebration? Well, not quite. My grandson is already 4, lives with a woman I’ve never met, a woman my son met once. It was at a party where they’d had too much to drink. One thing led to another, and…you get the picture.
He fought the paternity suit, all the way from blood tests to DNA matching. Somebody fathered this dark-haired, dark-eyed child (my son is blond, blue-eyed), but my son sure hoped it wasn’t him. He’s 29, just starting in a career, and the last thing he needed was a court order to send $350 a month to a stranger for the next 14 years.
Part of me is sorry, too. But I also think that someone should support this youngster-preferably his parents. As a teacher, I’ve seen too many bewildered kids with absent parents, kids with no lifelines, no sense of the rules or the penalties when they’re disobeyed. Since there’s no one at home to teach them the basics, they learn from a tough, unforgiving teacher: the real world. I hope this won’t happen to my grandson, although having financial support is certainly no guarantee that it won’t.
So now I’m a grandmother. I thought it would never happen. My son is the youngest of three children, and both my daughters, in their 30s, are sure they don’t want and won’t have children. The only clock they hear ticking is the one in the boardroom. Kids are such an interruption in the career flow! So noisy, messy, inconvenient! My daughters have watched their friends who are parents. They’ve seen how they must cope with the fatigue of small children on top of full-time jobs. They’ve seen the hassles with diapers and day care, coops and car pools. Even when bumbling toddlers are no longer spilling juice on the white rug, parents are haunted by problems beyond their control: drugs, gangs, violence and divorce. So, I understand when my daughters say, “No kids!”
The problem is that I’d looked forward to being a grandmother. My own mother and I weren’t friends until I had my own family. Then our lives came together. We were both unemployed: I was a “housewife,” she was retired. The high point of my week-hers too-was Wednesday when the kids and I met her at the bus stop. Through the bus window I’d watch her say goodbye to whomever she’d struck up an acquaintance with (how that used to annoy me), wade toward the front with her shopping bag, and glow like she’d been turned on from the inside when she saw us. She’d present the bag’s treasures: coupons to redeem, articles to read, the best of her garden for me; trinkets and Cracker Jacks for the kids.
These Wednesdays weren’t much, but they’re outlined in my memory, the kind of thing I now dredge up to soothe myself in the depths of a sleepless night. I did her mending because I liked to sew, and she did my ironing because she was patient. We’d eat a civilized lunch in the dining room, then she’d walk the kids to the park for duck feeding or a session on the swings. I spent an hour or so alone, usually working on a term paper (I’d gone back to school). Then, my mother and I would fix a real dinner for my husband and my dad who’d drive up after work to collect her. These were routine days, but I enjoyed them.
Somehow I had seen myself repeating the scenario: I would arrive to a warm welcome, my shopping bag crammed with a week’s accumulation of goodies. We’d spend a domestic day, then cap it with a family dinner, all of us, three generations sitting down together. I was going to make teddy bears and quilts and I’d bring roses or tomatoes. I’d clip coupons from the Sunday papers, and articles of interest things they might have missed in their busy routines. We were going to be so valuable to each other! In my imagination, these days of family visits glowed with rosy coziness.
How silly I was, expecting to repeat the past. My daughters are too busy, embroiled in their own agendas of obligations and careers (no husbands: they can be as inconvenient as children, although not as permanent). Spending a day with my daughters would be not only an imposition but a waste of time since no one mends or irons any more.
And now my son tells me I’m a grandmother, and I don’t know what to do. Am I to send birthday presents, or stocking stuffers at Christmas? When he’s old enough, will he send me school pictures? I’ll probably never meet him because his mother is hostile, wanting nothing from my son but the monthly cheek.
The other day I was talking to a friend about my unknown grandson, and she laughed bitterly. Her daughter’s marriage had just broken up, forcing a return home with three small children that my friend is getting to know all too well. I don’t wish for that. My life has become cluttered with knickknacks on low tables, and my tolerance for sticky door knobs or smudges on the glass-fronted buffet is transitory at best.
Yet I have things saved to tell my grandson, things he’ll value someday. He should know that if he is drawn to baseball, it’s my own dad reaching across the generations. In 1935, he was good enough to play for a St. Louis Browns farm team. My grandson should know his heritage. He should know that my people, hardy Kansas farm stock, live forever. My grandmother finally wore out at 105. 1 would like to walk in the park with this little guy, or feed the ducks. I could tell him many things. If we did get together, I wonder how he would react to this information coming from a stranger.
