We laughed at the quote in AARP magazine attributed to Tom Brokaw: “For parents, bribery is a white-collar crime, for grandparents, it’s a business plan.”
“Come over to my house and you would think it’s a Fisher-Price showroom,” quipped my salon friend. I call her a salon friend because I met her at the salon and the only time I see her is at the salon. Over the years, while getting our coiffeurs rearranged, we’ve shared bits and pieces about our lives, our families.
“I have four grandchildren, ranging in age from 16 to 3 months. I have been able to recycle the toys from the older to the younger … ” she took a breath, “but not the energy level. When they leave, I immediately take a long nap and plan on another for the next day.”
Another grandmother, who was waiting in the anteroom, came in to join in the conversation. She told us that her son and daughter-in-law were very strict about bedtimes and meals.
“Those poor kids never have desserts, candy or any sweets,” she said. “So, I try to make up for it at our house. We make cookies. I make French toast with maple syrup, something they would never have in their tofu and black bean home. I spoil them. I love doing it.”
You could just hear the unspoken “me toos” from the other grandmothers in the salon.
I learned how to be a grandmother from the best.
My maternal grandmother’s view of the world was built during the shortages she experienced in World War I England and later during the Depression in the U.S. There were few material things that filled her home for our playtime. The toys that we had to play with were simple, even in those days. Pick-up sticks, tiddlywinks, card games like crazy eights and canasta. The most elaborate toy that she had was a bingo game that we would play on the front porch on rainy days.
She gave us her time, inviting us into her daily routine so that we all learned how to sweep the living room carpet using the leftover tea leaves to keep the dust down. We all became proficient at making homemade root beer and “rubbing the fat in” when she made her wonderful version of scones. We ate well, too well, with triple decker sandwiches washed down with root beer and topped off with chocolate cake or cookies. She allowed us the freedom to play in the woods behind her house and to wander up the road to visit with other children … unsupervised. She didn’t care if we were barefoot. She was always, always frugal, but that parsimony didn’t translate into a lack of things to do or fun to have. She could make the simple things into great adventures, crafting crowns of daisies and an old curtain into a princess’s attire or a fabric remnant into a cape with superpowers. And there were her stories of her girlhood along the back lanes of Camborne in Cornwall, replete with monstrous bullocks who would chase her and her girlfriends all the way to the school house gates; almost mystical stories of another time and place that fascinated us as much as any fairytale.
She gave us the most luxurious gift of all: her time. No matter what she did, from a walk to get drinking water at the spring on Beekman Drive to picking wild black raspberries in the hedgerows or even gooseberries in the garden to make jam, we had her attention.
“Come with me,” she would invite .. and we would go, knowing that there was some wonderful experience to be had. A memory of the trip to get water brings with it the remembrance of the red wagon in which she had placed the gallon=sized glass bottles, separated by dish towels. We would walk to the spring where the water was icy cold and a small girl could sample the delicious, fresh elixir on a hot day while fetching the drinking water for the rest of the family in glass bottles that clinked against each other on the way home.
Today’s toys are more complicated. Our house is full of big trucks, battery operated racetracks, boxes and boxes of Legos and the remotes to our TV. I ply my grandsons with forbidden foods: cookies, cakes, fried fish and French fries. I haunt the stores for craft projects for them to build and paint … something they love. We take them to the park to spend hours on the playground where they are free to explore, armed with PB&J sandwiches and bottles of root beer. They watch Fireman Sam, Paw Patrol, Blaze and Harry Potter and the Kids Baking Championship until they are sleepy and we carry them upstairs to rest, after stories are read, in the bedrooms that belonged once to their mother and uncle, asleep under coverlets made by their great-grandmother, secure in knowing that someday they may write lovingly about me and Grandpa.
Ann Ferro is a mother, a grandmother and a retired social studies teacher. While still figuring out what she wants to be when she grows up, she lives in Marcellus with lots of books, a spouse and a large orange cat.
