The birth of Annie Louise Thoele on March 4 brought the number of grandchildren for my husband and me to a nice, even dozen. The oldest two are now in college, and the rest range from teens down to Annie’s 2-year-old brother.
Their presence has enriched my life in more ways than I can count, and I am so proud of them and of their brave and patient parents.
At some point or another along the way, I’ve lived in the same household with every one of my grandkids. In some cases, it was being mama and daddy to them for two weeks while their parents went on vacation. In other cases – like with Annie – I stayed in their home for a few weeks to help mom out after their birth. For the rest, they’ve come to live in my house for a few months or years while the world changes around us all.
I’ve come to realize that being able to be a part of their daily lives is a gift beyond price, one that grandparents who only get to visit will never know.
There is a strong bond that is built from just spending time together, doing the mundane things that make up our regular lives. I’ve shared millions of small moments with them over the years, from folding laundry to preparing meals to the rituals of bedtime.
As I head onto the downward curve in the arc of my life, it’s comforting to know I will leave a legacy for these children of my children.
Oh, it won’t be bank vaults stuffed with money or the deeds to vast tracts of land or a safety deposit box chock full of slim velvet cases of jewels.
Sorry, kids.
What they have gotten from me, and what I fervently hope they will carry down the coming years to their own children and grandchildren, will be the little, everyday things that take place between a Nana and her kiddos.
All 12 of them will carry a memory of the silly songs I’ve sung with them – “Where is Thumbkin?” and “Baby Beluga” and the “Mickey Mouse Club” theme.
Like all his older cousins before him, 2-year-old Ben chortles when I hold up the shirt I’m preparing to slide over his head, peer through the neck hole and roll my eyes back and forth, saying “Peekies!”
Before twins Savannah and Logan head to bed each night, we exchange “I love you” in sign language.
Twenty-year-old Grace “Gracie G,” 16-year-old Claire “C.B.” and 11-year-old Max “Maximum” smile when I call them by the nicknames only I use for them, while 9-year-old Ava exchanges philosophical emails with her grandfather and me.
James, now 9, has spent thousands of hours sitting at the table with me, sorting and building with Lego blocks. His brother, Damian, who turned 8 this week, giggles with me as we think up ever-sillier things to say in an exaggerated British accent.
Sadie, now in college, still laughs about the day she and I stood in her kitchen, seeing how many grapes we could stuff in our mouths at one time.
Each night before she goes to bed, 6-year-old Marley presses her lips to my forehead for a few seconds, then I do the same to her, as we “give each other a dream” for the night.
Because I’m the grandma and am not always weighted down with the responsibility of every detail of my grandchildren’s lives, I have the luxury of giving them my unencumbered time and attention. I don’t have to worry about their dentist appointments, monitor their grades or sign their field trip forms.
We can read together, color or draw, make slime, take nature walks and make fairy houses out of sticks and moss. We can spend a whole afternoon dirtying up the kitchen trying recipe experiments. We can share knock-knock jokes and pore over yellowed photographs as they listen raptly to my (sometimes dramatized) accounts of the Old Days.
Bette Davis once famously said, “Old age ain’t no place for sissies,” and she was right. Growing older has already had its challenges, and I’m sure there will be more. But it has been such a gift to be allowed this time with my grandchildren, and to have the opportunity to build relationships with them that will resonate through their lives.
The likelihood is virtually zero that I will be alive the first time Annie dandles a grandchild on her knee. But if, even once, she sings about Thumbkin, does “peekies” or pinches her thumb and forefinger together and mock-menaces, “I’m gonna get you with my baby getter!” I will be there.
There’s a song in the recently revived Broadway musical “Baby” that illustrates the situation perfectly.
A young mother-to-be muses, “A chain of life, begun upon the shore of some primordial sea, has stretched through time to reach to me. And now I can see the chain extending; my child is next in a line that has no ending. All that was, is part of me; as I am part of what’s to be. And thus it is our story goes on.”
That’s the gift my grandchildren and I have given – and are giving – one another. We get to ride along the journey together a few miles, with me forwarding the things passed down to me from grandmothers long ago to them as they head toward being the grandparents of the future.
It’s a fabulous trip.
