Personal Essay: Grandparenting 2.0
The pros and cons of keeping in touch via Skype.
by Jessica Knight
June 29, 2009
It's noon on Sunday, and as usual, I'm sitting at the kitchen table having lunch with my fourteen-month-old son and his grandparents. It's our weekly ritual, one that has become indispensable to all of us: I can take a precious few moments to catch up with my parents between cutting peanut butter sandwiches and retrieving dropped sippy cups, they get to dote on Nico and see how he's changed over the past week, and he gets to entertain his adoring fans, for whom everything he does is brilliant and hysterical. But when Nico tries to feed a piece of his sandwich to his grandfather, things get weird.
See, Grandma and Grandpap are 1,200 miles away. We maintain our weekly lunch date — and our familial bond — almost exclusively online, via Skype. Grandpap leans toward the screen, wiggling his moustache for effect, mouth wide open to accept whatever slimy, half-chewed morsel of food his grandson offers. And Nico, giggling expectantly, leans in closer and closer till I have to pull the laptop back to keep him from smearing jam across the screen. It's a sweet, silly exchange between them, which, like so much time spent with a baby, is not about doing anything significant, but rather just being together in the moment. But none of us quite knows what to do when our virtual relationship runs up against such literal walls.
Nico rolls with it, of course, and moves on to smashing kiwifruit into his hair.
What once seemed so Jetsonian is now a purely quotidian experience.
He is part of a brave new generation, one for whom communicating in this way that once seemed so impossible, so Jetsonian, is a purely quotidian experience. Nearly everyone I know whose kids have out-of-town grandparents does some sort of online video-calling, and a recent New York Times article documented just this phenomenon. But quotidian or not, I wonder about what it means for our relationships.
We travel to be together in person whenever we can, but the very reason for the more frequent visits — my son — makes traveling much more logistically challenging, not to mention more expensive. And my parents, like so many other baby-boomer grandparents, are younger and healthier than those of previous generations; they'd love nothing more than to be involved in their grandson's life, but also like many others of their generation, they find themselves having to work later in their lives and lack the leisure time or financial security to travel often.
©2009 Jessica Knight and Babble Media
About the Author
|
|
Related Articles
|
 |
Jessica Knight lives with her husband and son in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she teaches literature and writing. |
|
|
-
by Camille Sweeney
How preschoolers use the internet, and how to keep them safe online.
-
by Barbara Graham
I used to be in charge. Then my son had a baby.
-
by Jeanne Sager
There's no place like home for the holidays — my home.
|
