GRAND Magazine - March/April 2019 - 21

newish grands

4-year olds: a field guide for grandparents
BY LISA SMITH

ou're chugging along in life, riding the
wave of your career, say, and enjoying the
fact that your kids have left the nest. You
can go out without worrying about teenagers
lighting cherry bombs in your toilet or doing
anything else that requires police intervention
and/or consulting a professional plumber. You
can rest easy on the fact that you will come
home to quiet, everything nice and neat and
where you left it-no crushed, greasy pizza
boxes on the floor nor sweaty socks in the
entry-way chandelier (this happened at our
house once. My boys had a contest to see who

And then one day it happens:
you become a grandparent,
and it is so gratifying to see your
grown children getting a clue.

could get the most socks into the bowl of the
hanging light fixture).
You relish quiet nights watching Hidden
Expedition or Downton Abbey and cherish the
fact that you may eat as many Mint Milanos
as you wish undisturbed. You may have to share one or two with
your spouse, if you have one, but gone are the grubby hands of
your children digging into your favorite snack of all time, and gone
is the backwash of floating Cheeto crud they leave when they ask
(or don't) for a swig (a.k.a., a gallon-sized gulp) of your Diet Dr.
Pepper. Occasionally, you may feel a pang of emptiness, a kind of
Aw man that rolls through you as you remember when one of them

21 GRAND

MARCH APRIL 2019

snort-laughed during a game of Pictionary and the game was irrecoverable because no one could regain their composure, or a time
when a prolonged sit on the bed soothed some kid at school's hurtful jab. However, this passes and you once again delight in blasting
Josh Groban and Celine Dion in the shower. Time for my music, you
say to yourself, rubbing your palms together.
And then one day it happens: you become a grandparent, and
it is so gratifying to see your grown children getting a clue. Dirty

diapers, vomit, crying, sleeplessness, snot, endless laundry-these all work together with the
grand social, emotional, mental, and financial
expenses of it all to smack them upside the
head, and you get to sit back with your knowing smile, perhaps gloating a wee bit, snuggling
that sweet baby and smelling her lovely babyness. You bond with her immediately and vow
to be her Great Protector and Teacher, your
cape flowing in the wind, for that is your role as
a grandparent.
And if you buy this sunshine-and-roses
bull, you may as well bow out of life and take
up with some carnies, because you don't even
have an inkling. The "grand" in "grandparent"
doesn't hurl you up on some lofty pedestal
from which you bestow golden rays of wisdom.
No. "Grand" doesn't mean you've risen to the
level of Illustrious or Magnificent, probably not
even Venerable. "Grand" means extra, as in
additional, like getting a grande at Starbucks.
You get the 12-ounce tall, plus an extra four
ounces. As a grandparent, you get to be a
parent all over again in that you're teaching
your children how to be parents, and the extra
four ounces is that you get to parent your grandchildren as well.
And your house will never be clean again, so make peace
with that right now, along with the fact that the Mickey Mouse
Clubhouse theme song is now the soundtrack to your life and
you will be expected to have gummy fruit snacks at any given
time and place. Stuff your pockets, your purse, your glovebox. Put
some baby wipes in there too.
Continued on next page

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GRAND Magazine - March/April 2019

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