Personal Essay: Absentee Grandparents
They say they’re excited. So where are they?
by Amina Sharma
July 16, 2009
I cannot believe I am having this conversation again. It's my mother, calling to say that she will be postponing her visit to see her grandson for the fourth time.
"I very much wanted to come but I have to go to a conference in Heidelberg," she said in her accented English. "I won't have any money afterwards so I'll plan to come in a few months instead. And how is your baby?"
You mean your grandson, I think. "He's doing great. He's crawling everywhere now and yesterday he pulled a cookbook off the bookshelf. He . . . "
"Oh, that reminds me of something that Tsetse did," she breaks in excitedly. And she's off on a story about one of her cats.
At this point she hasn't met her grandson yet and he's nine months old. Rafael's got two tiny front teeth, which gleam when he grins. Before bed he crawls over to the desk chair in his footie pajamas and laughs with delight as he grips the rungs and stands.
He tracks our cat Lola through the house, cackling as he follows her determined retreat only to be distracted by, oh . . . a
New Yorker. Perfect for chewing and tearing.
What's not for a grandparent to love?
I thought I'd made some peace with my mother, by which I mean that I've learned to temper my expectations.Yet my mother is not interested. She wasn't interested during the early days of the pregnancy, when I curled up in bed, elated by the precious life I was carrying and also awash in worry; longing for a mother of my own to reassure me. She wasn't interested
in the first ultrasound, the first kick, or the induction that led to thirty hours of labor and a C-section. After my husband and I called from the hospital, she did send flowers, which was very sweet. Then I didn't hear from her again until I called her a
few weeks later.
I thought I'd made some peace with my mother, by which I mean that I've learned to temper my expectations. But becoming a parent myself means having to ask for something: for her to be a grandparent. So far, she's made it clear that she's unable to do this.
And I evidently have not reached the zen state that I hope to someday achieve. The truth is, I want more for my son.
My husband and I cope with the disappointment by laughing at the can-you-believe-it stories. Like the Christmas gift she sent her grandson — the only gift she's ever given him — which was built up with major anticipation. "I'm waiting until Christmas to
give Rafael something really special," she stated on more than one occasion. When the gift turned out to be a cloth book about a cartoon tiger, she emphasized that she chose it for zoological accuracy. "The orange means that it's a Bengali tiger, not a Siberian
tiger."
At first my father seemed like he would be the same as my mother. I didn't hear much from him during the pregnancy, and he also was not interested in all the major milestones as the baby developed. In the last couple of weeks of my pregnancy, though, he
began calling constantly to find out if I'd given birth. Each time I would patiently explain that I would call him and let him know. He visited us in the hospital, and although I could barely get out of bed, and looked like the Michelin Man after the prolonged
labor and drugs, he didn't ask how I was doing — instead saying, "I thought about getting you flowers, but you know, maybe next time."
©2009 Amina Sharma and Babble Media
About the Author
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Amina Sharma is a freelance writer and editor with over 15 years of experience. She has worked for WGBH public television, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Pearson Publishing, and Nickelodeon. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son. |
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