Grandmotherness

Here’s a boomer milestone: even the youngest boomer today is now old enough to be a grandparent. We saw a fun piece by Susan Rosenbaum on MomLogic.com about how she’s handling “grandmotherness.” Quite well, we think!

So finally, I too joined the wild and enchanted world of grandmotherness. Sometimes it truly feels like a trip to Oz, complete with Munchkinland — but most definitely without the wicked witch. It’s surely not my Grandma Rose’s era, that spunky woman — most likely younger than I am today — who wore whalebone corsets until she died, had natural salt and pepper hair (permed regularly), adored “Mox” aka Clark Gable, romance novels, and her grandchildren, of course.

Indeed, some of us do have natural gray hair (although most of us need that monthly touch-up of auburn or blonde), some of us wear Juicy Couture, some of us refuse to be called grandma (and definitely not granny), and some of us redo our entire house as a playroom, including a trampoline and several king-sized beds lined up! And many of us keep close through video chats instead of weekly visits complete with chocolate chip cookies. We were, many of us, the Supermoms of our generation — and the Ubermoms. In our time, we were at the top of our games, raising kids, feeding kids, shopping, balancing our mothering with full-time careers as lawyers, accountants, teachers, even diplomats — and yet our lives were expanded by those soccer games, dance classes, and homework.

So it’s no surprise that lots of us have just slipped right into being Ubergrandmas. We help raise the grandkids, we shop for the grandkids, we go to their dance recitals and their soccer games, some of us even fly weekly from state to state to be there for our own Ubermom daughters and daughters-in-law… and, at the same time, have jobs. One grandma I know appears regularly in TV commercials and takes parts in movies. We are even now taking care of our own elderly parents, the great-grandparents. We embrace the challenge. We weren’t stay-at-home mamas and we are not stay-at-home grandmas now.

Of course, lots of grandmas are happy to be stay-at-home grandmas. But we’re hardly “The Goodnight Moon” grandma, with all her white hair tucked into a bun. (That truly confuses my granddaughter.) And we’re not like Grandma Rose either — we wear Spanx and not corsets. And while some grandmas continue to make chicken noodle soup, many prefer tofu burgers. So while today “grandmotherness” can be “grand-otherness,” we all give love and give ourselves.

It’s a small world after all.

Read more at MomLogic.com

Filed Under: Baby Boomers • Family & Children • Featured Story • Susan Rosenbaum

Tags: grandparents • Momlogic