Grandmoni Minutes: Grandmothering a Graduate

Exactly one year ago, our baby graduated from high school. The headmaster worked his way through the alphabet calling each graduate to the stage, enlisting the parents in handing over the diploma, recognizing our teamwork in reaching this goal. Awaiting our turn, I leaned over to my husband and asked why all of the parents looked like kids. "Because they are" , he chuckled. "And next year, our son is going to be doing this with our grandson."

Yes, the "then" is "now". The reality of being the grandmother of a high school graduate sneaked up on me. In fact, because our oldest grandson is only eighteen months younger than our youngest child, grandmothering has taken me a bit by surprise. I had not finished reading all the parenting books much less, the grandparenting books, when our grandson was born. Delighted as I was to don this additional hat, I had questions. Was I supposed to be the indulgent grandmother? Was he supposed to have the same rules as my child? I began to imagine Josie tapping her toe with her hands on her hips. I could almost hear her thinking, "Why does he get to do that and I don't?" So I have played it by ear. This boy and this grandmother have grown up together. He got his name through me, you might say. My daddy was Emery. And he was the one to first to give me the name, Grandmoni, that has stuck with the subsequent sixteen grandchildren. We are figuring this out together.

We have not lived in the same town making it possible to drive by for a hug. Emery has never lived next door and popped in after school for milk and cookies. Grandenny and I have not scooped him up to take him home for the day after church as do other grandparents on whom I look with more than a little envy, at times. Nonetheless, God has scripted our lives and fashioned our relationship however atypical our patterns may be. When in Tennessee for graduation, I got to peek at a shared journal that Emery and I have passed back and forth through the USPS off and on over the years. How precious to see his stick figure drawings and kindergarten scrawls turn into more expressive thoughts and penmanship that accompanied photos we also stuck to the pages. The written words and visuals jumped off the page and helped me remember the richness of the times we have shared instead of bemoaning the fact that I have not been gramma-extraordinaire.

I was reminded that we have snuggled and read abundant bedtime stories. We have driven to Texas and watched football under Friday night lights, where we visited school and ate lunch off cafeteria trays. We took miles of walks and once collected a bumper crop of hedge apples, totally enamoured with our bounty even before Google existed to identify our harvest. We have shared bonfires, s'mores and bunnies and Christmas stockings and Easter baskets. Our grandson has romped with cousins in the pool, engaged in water balloon fights & paintball wars, and participated in Thanksgiving afternoon football games. We have tied yellow ribbons around the trees, raised the flag and celebrated with all manner of red, white and blue his dad's return from Iraq. Documentation testifies to Emery's being cast in nearly every role in the family Christmas Eve pageant, starting with Baby Jesus, winding his way through shepherds and wise men and Joseph, finally graduating to narrator. Grateful I am to have written on the pages of his life. More grateful, still, to be able to pray through future ages and stages where God is fully present and we are not. He is writing the story.

In a heartbeat, my grandson became a high school graduate. And just as he has been prepared for his next steps in life, God will equip me to fulfill the role He has for me in this young man's life, not measuring myself by other GRANDmothers, (real or the movie-kind) but stepping into the work He has begun.

"For if the readiness is present, it is acceptable according to what a man has, not according to what he does not have."

II Corinthians 8:12