Grandmotherly Love

I read a poem every morning. I used to struggle to read poetry. I wanted to like it but I couldn’t understand it. I committed to reading each poem twice, some stanzas that felt really foreign to me I’d read aloud. 

After many months of reading a poem every morning, it’s like my brain finally speaks that language. I understand what I am reading; I feel movement in my body, in my heart, when I read certain combinations of words. After all this time I finally speak poetry.

This morning the poem (Grandmother by Kate Duignan) was about the author’s memory of her grandmother. The images of a cracked egg, a full moon, a compost bin, and a cake rising in the oven are the anchors of the poet’s memory of her grandmother. Between the anchors are waves of the author’s feelings in the presence of her grandmother— care, affection, comfort, security, and love.

When I finished reading the poem I meditated. Behind my closed eyes, images of my Nana floated into my consciousness. Anchors of my love for her and the love I felt from her moved through my memory — the green square elevator button I pressed to the fourteenth floor, the square plastic tub filled with chilled, peeled carrots in the fridge, her chair in the den where she filled in her crossword puzzles.

And the feeling that came into my body was warm, like a blanket from the inside out, a reminder of the love that existed between us, of the comfort and ease I felt in her presence. It’s a gift when memories show up like that and I thank the poet for bringing me to that sensory experience of love for my own grandmother.

Mothers who’ve graduated into the role often say that it is pure joy to be a grandmother. As a mother, I wonder what changes I’ll make to be that person to my child’s child one day. I imagine that for many people being a grandmother is delightful because there is the simple joy of watching a tiny person grow into a bigger person without the responsibility of shepherding them there.

But I think there is something more too. Recently I’ve had the chance to babysit a friend’s three-year-old daughter. We play make-believe, we sing, we laugh. It’s a magical respite from the rigor of parenting a seventeen-year-old. With my three-year-old friend, I regurgitate songs from my daughter’s childhood, tunes that bubble from my unconsciousness. I remember singing those songs with my daughter, playing with her in the same way.

And I miss that. I miss playing. I get so many other things from my almost-grown daughter these days. Yesterday we spent an hour in the kitchen talking about the definition of intuition and if there is a scientific basis for the concept. Interesting and stimulating. But it’s not playing. It’s different from engaging with a little three-year-old who thinks everything you do is magic, who needs your care and attention to go potty or have a snack.

Maybe that’s what grandmothers feel. Maybe they experience a coming home of sorts, revisiting that time of maternal purity, a time when the relational baggage from being a mother to teens, then young adults, then older adults, isn’t so weighty and complicated. 

I don’t know if I’ll be a grandmother one day. I hope I will. The memories I have of my Nana, those feelings she showered upon me — love, delight, pure joy — still visit me regularly. I remember her and I’m as grateful for her in my life as I know she was for mine in hers.