Sometimes it seems so surreal to stop and seriously look at my life, to acknowledge that “I” am a grandmother…an honest to goodness, in the flesh, grandmother of “4″ now. Perhaps it has something to do with having raised the twins for 6 years,..and because I still play a very big part in their day-to-day lives even though they live with their mom now, my ‘grandmotherly experience’,..just didn’t have a ‘grandmotherly’ feel to it yet.
I thought that when my son and his wife had their baby “that” would be when it would happen, when I would start to feel like a “real grandmother”. But no,..three years into that experience, I still feel no different. And now there is yet another precious grandchild to add to my list of treasures and I STILL just cant seem to experience this “feeling” I have been expecting to show up with the grandparenting experience.
So I decided it was time to try and figure out WHAT exactly it was I was waiting for!
Was it that I was waiting to feel “Old”? Because I don’t. I don’t feel like a grandmother.
Was it that I was waiting to feel “Liberated”? Because I don’t. I can’t let go of the responsibility and the privilege I feel to be vigilant, to ‘oversee’, to ‘keep a watchful eye’, on my family tucked safely under my wings.
Was it that I was waiting to feel “Stability”? Because I don’t. I was thinking when I got to this point I would have a life that represented some kind of ’security’, that there would be certain things like finances and such, that would be a ‘done deal’,..all in place. No such luck….here I am, experiencing the same fears and apprehension everyone else does, regardless of age, that is trying to ‘make it’ in this world.
Talking to myself I finally realized - what I am waiting for will never show up. It can’t exist in this present era. Things have evolved, times have changed, I am not my grandparents and I will never experience grandparenting in the same way that they did. What I was waiting for, thinking would ’show up’,…won’t. The feeling was misplaced, it was a lingering thought from another dimension of time that is long past.
Myself, and 43 million plus boomer grandparents are pioneering a whole new standard for grandparenting that is as unique as the grandparent themselves. There are no absolutes, nothing is written in stone. We have the freedom to not be shackled to old perceptions and stereotypes.
There is a new feeling now that has replaced “the feeling” I was waiting for, it’s the feeling TO BE FREE to be the grandparent I am. *Deep breath* And it feels good.
