When I was a kid, we visited our grandparents maybe once a year but the visits always seemed to end in shouting matches between my father and his mother. You see, my dad was a ‘union man’ and therefore, a staunch Democrat whereas my grandparents were staunch Republicans.
I had no awareness as a child of the political aspects of life, I just remember feeling very uncomfortable and baffled by all this shouting. Therefore, I never felt a closeness to my grandparents – and not just because of the long distance between our homes – but because there did not seem to be much love between them.
It was not until I grew up, had a child, and became a Republican that I began to understand my granmother. She visited my parents when my daughter was just a year old and I happened to be there as well. I had a lovely conversation with her and left feeling a warmth and love that was never there before. I treasure that visit because it was the only one we had before she died.
I now find myself in the very same situation with my own firstborn – being of different political persuations – but, unlike my grandmother and father, I choose NOT to have political discussions with her. In fact, I have to restrain my husband from making any ‘comments.’ I do not want to end up with no relationship with my grandchildren until they are grown women.
My grandmother had many other grandchildren – some who lived close – so I am sure it never occured to her to try to keep a relationship with my father to protect a relationship with her grandkids. In any case, I do not want my grandchildren to have ANY memories of a ‘heated discussion’ between their parents and their grandparents. Kids do not need that. They need nurture, support, unconditonal love and goodies…(I added this last part for me.)
Being a grandmother makes me miss my own mother and helps me understand her a little better as well. She and I never developed a ‘grown-up’ relationship, having lived apart all of my adult life, and then it was too late to develop one. She died much too young, by today’s standards – she was just 76. I am 66 and know that 76 is still very young.
I want so much to have a close relationship with my adult children but, somehow, it seems almost insurmountable at times. We do not seem to be a high priorty with them, which continues to baffle me since we are not near them very often – only in the spring and early fall. The rest of the time we travel. It puzzles me that they do not seem to want to make efforts to include us in their lives during the time we are near.
I reach back to my own relationship with my grandparents and realize that we did not live close and therefore there were not the opportunities to create a bond – more with my mother’s parents but still…not close.
This was the roll model I had. My own children did not live close to their grandparents so also did not form close bonds. I did not see this coming for me. My mother always said, “Your children learn from you.” I wish I had listened and tried harder to include grandparents in my children’s lives.
I am at a loss to know how to reverse this trend and make them understand that THEIR children will learn from THEM as well.