The art and value of grandparenting

Living in Southern California Helen and I are about 3,000 miles from our grandchildren, Crawford, 7, and Schuyler, 4, who live in New York City. From our standpoint this circumstance is not optimal, but as they say, it is what it is. Fortunately our son works hard to see that we get visits with them on a home and away basis and our daughter-in-law and her family are always welcoming on our visits to their family weekend home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

In this new role I think back often on my own grandparents, three of whom I knew pretty well and one, my mother's father, who died while she was in college, I never met. He was a successful lawyer in Nashua, New Hampshire. I probably saw more of my paternal grandmother than the others, mostly because she lived the longest, I think about 90 years, and because she always presided over The Trail's End Farm in South Lynboro, New Hampshire, where my family (brother, mother, father) spent one month of every year, driving to and from the farm from our home in Central Florida, long before something called interstates, The trip one way was a three days journey with overnight stops in North Carolina and Maryland. I think our family must have made that round trip at least 15 consecutive years. I remember those three grandparents fondly, how they were revered by my parents, and how that caring and respect rubbed off on my brother and me and all our cousins. My paternal grandfather was a large, physically imposing man who used to take my brother and me to the local swimming lake in Florida (there was a non-swimming lake near by, too) and while we swam he would take out his whittling knife and meticulously obliterate the naughty words carved on the dock by the town houligans. I was eight in 1943 when he died of a heart attack pruning a fruit tree in his back yard in Florida. I remember being, at least momentarily, quite afraid when he died. Here we were in the middle of a terrible war against three horrible enemies, Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, and this important person in our family's life was suddenly no more. It was also the first time I experienced the death of a close family member. My maternal grandmother, Nana, I remember for all the wonderful meals she loved to prepare for me (and the others) and how, since we only saw her once a year in the summertime, she could never get over how fast I always seemed to her to be growing taller. One summer when I was working at my first serious job at my paternal grandfather's manufacturing plant in NashuaI, I spent two months with her. I think I was about 16 at the time. She liked me and I liked her, even after two months together, just the two of us. I always sensed she loved me with no reservations, and that was a nice feeling.

Grandparenting is all about one generation enjoying another generation without the impediments of serious parenting responsibilities. That's not to say grandparents don't or can't play a direct role raising the next generation. They certainly can, and sometimes have to out of necessity, but most of the time the grandparent's role is not the day in, day out one of constant disciplining, training and tutoring that conscientious parents provide. Rather it's more like providing assurance that there is stability in the world and that there is such a thing as unqualified love that connects all generations. That seems to me to be a particularly important role in these times when often both parents work long hours in high powered jobs which means some surrogate parenting by nannies. I like being a grandparent but I do wish those two jewels weren't 3,000 miles away.