Ancestry would like me to think I knew who my Grandmother was – she was born in 1881 in Pennsylvania when her mother was 19 years old. She was the oldest of nine siblings, a relatively small Irish family for its time. In a 1930 census, her marital status was listed as “divorced,” even though I never heard of a divorce. She had only four children, three girls and a boy, even smaller still. My Mother, the Flapper, was her baby. I was the last grandchild, the one who was raised in NJ by foster parents. But when we’d drive over the Delaware River water Gap to visit, sometimes we’d go to her house. And I remember she loved me.
I remember her dark black stockings and the noise they made when she walked. The jars of pickles she stored on shelves leading down to the cellar. And the overall feeling that she could trust me; to go to the store and come back with the correct change, to behave in the movie theatre. She treated me like a grownup, which was very different from the way my foster parents were raising me. Nell and Jim were in their 50s – almost like grandparents themselves – when they rescued me from our Year of Living Dangerously. I wasn’t allowed to hold a knife, to cut up the food on my plate.
So I take my responsibility as a grandmother very seriously.
When we were celebrating the twins’ first birthday last month, I noticed that one was getting tired and a little cranky. After all, it was a big day in the fresh air and the usual nap time had flown by, so I stuck my pinky into the icing of a cupcake and proffered it up to her. The tears stopped in their tracks! And of course what’s good for the goose, I had to give the other baby princess a little taste. Little did I know that my son and daughter-in-love were not keen on giving the girls sugar. In my defense, I knew they were not drinking apple juice by the gallon like my children had done ages ago. Milk and water only. But luckily, my cupcake slight was taken with good humor.
Of course there were rules and regs around my first grandchild’s birth – no sleeping with the baby (check), no putting her to sleep on her tummy (check), having to watch a video about swaddling (check). Wasn’t it strange to wrap up a baby like that, I liked to leave their arms out, but OK. I remember the Bug’s first birthday, driving the nine hours to Nashville, and all the preparation. Making tiny sandwiches, cleaning and cooking, but then I missed the actual celebration as I came down with a virus. I could hear the laughter and the singing from my attic bedroom. I don’t even know if a piece of birthday cake was placed on the Bug’s highchair.
My generation likes to complain that we raised a generation that parents by Google. In the same way that our adult children don’t want our stuff, they also don’t want our parenting advice. I’ve come to terms with this. I learned a long time ago not to offer any advice unless specifically asked for some, but when it comes to food, well, I still think I might know a thing or two. Because my foster parents made me sit at the table until I’d cleaned my plate, I know how damaging that can be. So it’s not surprising that most new parents take issue with their own parents’ feeding scheme.
“‘I had to sit my mom down and say, ‘You’re force-feeding my child; this can cause an unhealthy relationship to food.’ She tried to explain her philosophy, and her pediatrician’s, to her mother and mother-in-law: that children should have healthy food offered to them, and after half an hour, whatever is left uneaten should be taken away. “That wasn’t part of the culture when they were raising us,” she told me. “They said they never heard of any of the things we mentioned to them.” Instead, her mother would sit her 3-year-old granddaughter on the floor and hand-feed her dinner for two hours until the plate was clean. It drove the Chicago mother a bit batty.” https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/04/when-grandparenting-clashes-parenting/618758/?gift=MZkyOCULmn5OA_9_ikIP-5SEDWu-wHCmcQ_P9jK_svM&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Force feeding a child would drive me batty too. The Flapper was the best, she’d laugh if I didn’t want to eat something and say, “All the more for us.” I must say, the Twins are voracious eaters. Kiki makes them delicious meals filled with real fruit, veggies and chicken or salmon. I’m partial to her “nana” pancakes. She just sent us a video of the two of them sitting next to each other in their high chairs, holding their little spoons and ‘sharing’ their food and babbling all about it to each other. They were smiling the whole time like it was an inside joke! It is the single cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
I think back about the Rocker, how I’d figured out that if we could just dip something in ketchup, he’d eat it. About Grandma Ada teaching the Bride how to cut up a grapefruit and fill it with sugar. About how she’d make ‘toast tights’ with an iron-clad contraption on the stove that was basically cream cheese and jelly. About how she’d always have candy in her pockets, but I never asked her not to feed our kids candy. Why? I remember not liking the constant offering of sweets, but maybe it was my Catholic upbringing. You respect your elders.
I wish I knew my Nana better but I was the Love Bug’s age, 13, when she died in 1961. The Bug was just telling me what she remembers about Ada, and her candy dish took center stage! That’s the little Flapper in the middle, with her Mother my Nana on the right and Grandmother, maybe 1915.
MountainMornings 