Grandparent to Parent

It was a Sunday night late in the summer when we caught a rerun of 60 minutes. The featured story that evening focused on two couples raising their grandchildren. I can remember my stomach turning watching these two couples put aside all their retirement dreams to care for the most vulnerable ones in their family. My stomach was uneasy because I knew in my heart and head, just how close we were to assume this same role for our 7 year old grandson.

Fast forward two weeks to when his aunt and I along with our pastor entered a courtroom to seek legal guardianship. For those of you not familiar with the court system, this is a daunting and very emotional experience. As a mom and grandmother, there was a sense of betrayal to my own child in order to provide a safe and stable environment for my grandson. At the end, the judge saw that I was visibly upset and his response, “you did the right thing”, helped me feel better about my choice.

The reason why my daughter or her husband are unable to parent now is complicated, there’s no easy answer or quick fix and I’ve had to learn to embrace patience and the 3 C’s, I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it and I can’t cure it.  All I can do is love her unconditionally and to make sure she knows her son is safe and cared for with us.

I am grateful for a family and community who have embraced this new arrangement.  And, it’s often in the small things I see God’s grace. The strong bond with his aunties, uncles and his cousins, the church members that invite him to sit with them so my husband and I can sing in the choir, his Sunday school teachers and helpers with a kind word and praise for his work, his school teacher praising him for his achievements. It’s in these little things that I see his transformation, his awareness that others really do care about him and appreciate and love his quirky little self. It really does take a village.

I’m most grateful for my husband of almost 11 years who never signed up to be a surrogate father at age 70.  I’m appreciative of his patience, his thoughtfulness and the love he has for me and for this little man. He’s taken it upon himself to be the transportation parent, the one to wait with little man at the bus stop, to answer all his questions about the worms, the squirrels, the bees and our resident fox. And he’s also the parent to greet him at the end of the school day by meeting his bus. I’m also grateful to him for introducing his love of the outdoors, helping gather firewood and starting a fire and for taking little man on his first hike to Mt. Wachusett

Our retirement mode has morphed into full on parent mode, supervising homework, bed time and morning routines, eliminating processed foods as best as we can, and our personal favorite, monitoring the devices. He’s an avid reader, we can hardly keep up with his love of Captain Underpants, Dog Man and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And we believe he may have inherited the artistic gene from his great papa Gray, as he loves to create his own comic books.

And an added benefit is his new relationship with my husband’s side of the family. Now that he lives with us, he comes with us when we visit my husband’s parents, so he’s gained a new set of great grandparents, Ahma and Great Papa and an uncle and two very special cousins, one with the same name as his, although they are 50+ years apart in age. And I believe he’s mastered how best to navigate the buffet line at their assisted living community.

Meanwhile our retirement travel plans have been put on hold, I’ve stopped looking at the glossy brochures from Viking River Cruises and an occasional night out is a real treat. But just as satisfying is our new Sunday night tradition of popcorn and hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire and maybe, just maybe, we get to eat dinner in the Living Room. And the joy of experiencing the magic of Christmas through the eyes of a sweet little boy.

I hope when he is older and looks back at this time in his life he won’t think of it as the most traumatic time of his childhood, of being taken away from his mother and father. I hope he’ll be able to look back and feel this was a time he was loved and cared for. And I hope my family and friends know just how much I appreciate their support and love for both our little man and his momma, as we all navigate this new journey in our lives.

I don’t have a crystal ball, I don’t know what the future will hold for him, but I do know he’s strong, he’s resilient, he’s incredibly bright and most importantly he’s loved unconditionally by many people and with all that in his favor, how could his future not look bright and wonderful?