What Will the Grandkids Call You?

Grandchildren don’t make a man feel old; it’s the knowledge that he’s married to a grandmother.
--G. Norman Collie

I’d had nine months to choose a name to be called by when my daughter Morgan was pregnant the first time, and I was no closer to finding one than when I started. I’d spent most of that time trying to avoid Grandma, a word that lay in wait for me like a pair of dentures in a glass.

It’s the default word in my family: My mother is Grandma, and her mother was Grandma. My two older sisters are Grandma to their grandchildren. And my son-in-law Trevor’s mother, Barbara, more mature than I am despite our being roughly the same age, cheerfully became Grandma, while his dad became Grandpa.

I couldn’t be called Grandma, my husband, Bill, insisted, as if I’d told him it was my dream to be called that. He wouldn’t sleep with a grandma; you couldn’t make him. “Fine,” I told him, “I’ll get somebody else.” But I understood. The word Grandma transformed his wife and Friday-night date into an old lady with graying hair that she hadn’t found time to comb, oatmeal boiling on the stove, smiling uncertainly as Morgan dropped by in her business suit to hand over yet another squalling infant to go with the several others crawling on the floor.

As the months went by, I hadn’t found another name. It was important. The name I chose would have a lot of responsibilities. It would have to allow me to claim grandbaby Ryan as her grandmother -- the person ready to open her fridge, her wallet, her house and her heart to her. It would have to contain all the wonder of this new child in my life and all the wonder of watching Morgan find out, in her turn, the wonder of having a daughter.

And it would have to achieve all this without giving me or anybody else the idea that I am old enough to be anybody’s grandmother.