I never set out to be an “older” mom, but as that combination of luck, fate, and my own choices for good or ill would have it, that’s how it worked out. Even if I hadn’t started my journey into motherhood a bit later, by my choice of partner we were going into the parenting game already facing a bit of a “Grandparent Deficit” as it’s become known. My husband lost his father to cancer when he was only 12 years old. He’s now lived past the age at which his dad died – 42. My mother-in-law also died in 2013, and my kids’ ages at that time – 5 and 3 – means that I don’t really know how much they will or won’t remember of their Grandma. My own mother passed when I was 7 weeks pregnant with our first child. Her sister, my aunt, followed a few years later, and two of my three older brothers have also unfortunately met untimely ends due to illness. Suffice it to say, we have seen some death and loss in our family, though I don’t say “more than our share” or even “our share” since really, you never know what your share is going to be. There’s no sense tempting fate.
We do have one Grandparent in the mix – my dad, my first hero. He lives about 300 miles away but we’ve done a lot in the years since the kids have been born to bridge that distance as often as possible. I think we both know and sense the urgent importance of the role that grandparents and extended family play in the lives of young children. Having grandparents and other older, extended family members are the roots from which our babies can grow their wings; the scaffolding of their additional years of experience, their stories, their ways of remembering us – the parents – when we were their children adds all the color and background to the rich tapestry of our children’s lives. Without that structure behind us, supporting us, I think there’s something a little less vibrant in kids’ lives, and parents can founder and feel adrift.
So what do we do? How can we hope to compensate for this hole that Scott and I definitely sense in our extended family? We make the most of what (and who) we do have. There are a few efforts we very consciously make to make sure our kids have a sense of our entire, loving, crazy family, with all of their accomplishments and flaws.
- While it might not make a lot of sense to some, this is part of the reason it was so important for us to have a sibling for E. We felt strongly that since we know we’ll never have a huge extended family, our kids should at least have each other. And they do. As 5 year-old J recently told me, “I love E so much. I love her so much that when she cries, I cry. And remember when I bonked my head? And I cried? Then she cried too.”
- We do try to see and spend time with my dad as often as possible, and when we are together, we make it good quality time. There’s not much burying of any heads in a device, or zoning out in front of the TV. We try to do things together, share meals together; we especially love camping with Grandpa because it gives us all a chance to be a little more unplugged, to sit around a campfire and just talk.
- We are so blessed that my dad also has a partner with whom to share his life – Bonnie, Nan – she’ll answer to any child because that’s the kind of grandmother she is. She treats our kids with the same love and attention that she has for her own grandchildren, and they adore her in return.
- Though it’s no substitute for having them here in person, we remember deceased family members to our children, looking at photos and telling stories about them. This isn’t something we set out to do at any specific times, but seems to happen organically enough – when the kids want to look at pictures of themselves, during holidays when we’re spending time with the family we do have, when some habit or random thing that’s come up reminds one of us of our mothers or other loved ones. Just as we will always cherish memories of deceased loved ones in our hearts, we want to bring that out in the open and share it. We hope that our kids will feel they “know” their grandmas and uncles a little bit – even if they don’t actually remember those individuals, our memories can take color and shape for our children as well.
- We’ve extended our definition of “family” – including cousins, our Bonnie, my good friends and their families, teachers and neighbors. There are so many other adults in our kids’ lives who matter to them, influence them, and show them all the different ways human beings can care for and nurture one another. We don’t underestimate the value of having those trusted family and friends in our “village.”
