“Children are
investments. Grandchildren are pure interest” goes an old saying. Everyone
knows that the relationship between grandchildren and their grandparents is
special. The question is why? What do grandparents actually do? How do their
grandchildren feel about it? And is it always an idyllic relationship?
Growing up, I did
not know my grandparents well because they lived in England. Many of my
classmates did not have grandparents living in the same city as themselves either.
Some of them were children of Holocaust survivors, and their grandparents had
been killed. Others were children of immigrants, and their grandparents lived
in other countries.
Things are
different today. Lifespans are longer, and many children have grandparents and
even great-grandparents. As my friend told me, “One of my great-grandchildren
has four grandparents and eight great-grandparents. At two years old, she
probably thinks all adults are called bubby or zeidy!”
Now I am a
grandmother myself, and many of my grandchildren live here in Baltimore and
even attend the same school I attended. There is much more opportunity to have
a close relationship with them. But it is not so easy. It’s not like connecting
to your own children, which happens by default. Curious to learn more about
grandparents and grandchildren, I set out to talk to both and find out what
they did to foster their relationships.
A Good Influence
One of my sons-in-law
is a fountain of good ideas about our mesora (tradition). I asked him whether there are any stories in the
Torah about the relationship between grandchildren and grandparents. He
immediately came up with a great story: “Eisav
wanted to kill Yaakov, his twin brother,” he told me. “He sent his son Eliphaz
to find Yaakov and kill him. When Eliphaz caught up to Yaakov, he just couldn’t
bring himself to kill his uncle. Why not? Surely, being the son of Eisav,
Eliphaz was used to killing. Rashi tells us that he couldn’t kill Yaakov
because he was brought up in the house of Yitzchak, his grandfather.”
So here is an
example from thousands of years ago of the influence a grandfather had on his
grandchild! I don’t know if Yitzchak
spent “quality time” with Eliphaz or if he sent him birthday cards or played
games with him, but he certainly was an influence for the good. Because of
Yitzchak, Yaakov’s life was spared.
A neighbor of mine
said that the image of his grandfather conducting the Seder at the head of the
table had a huge influence on his life, and eventually led to him becoming a baal teshuva.
The Seder – especially now that he is the grandfather – remains the
highlight of his year.
My cousins told me
that my father’s parents were wealthy, aristocratic people who left Germany
before the war and lived in London. For many years, my grandparents gave up the
master bedroom and slept in a tiny little room so that their mother, who had
escaped Germany with them, could have the master bedroom. This made a big
impression on my cousin, who told me, “Our grandparents excelled in the mitzvah
of kibbud av va’eim.”
She also told me
how my grandmother kept up with her children who lived overseas by writing five
individual airmail letters each week, one to each of her children. Another
cousin remembers, “I had my bas
mitzvah in their house. I was allowed to invite five girls, and each
girl got a bracelet with her name on it.” These stories helped me envision my
grandparents as real people.
The Role of Grandparents
What is the
grandparents’ role? Where do they fit into the lives of their grandchildren?
One of my sons said, “A grandparent’s job is to provide unconditional love.
Parents have to bring up their children, discipline them and teach them right
from wrong. When a child gets a feeling from their grandparents that they are wonderful
it gives them self-confidence.”
This definition
rang true to me. My younger sister was born after I already had children. She
told me recently that she was jealous of the attention my mother gave to my
children, who were her grandchildren. “Mommy reassured me that mothers always
love their own children the best, so I didn’t have to be jealous,” my sister
remembers. But it took a while for my sister to internalize that message.
Tzipora, a mother
of many, who calls her own grandmother every single day says, “It is not so
hard to call my grandmother. She tells me that I am amazing even when I tell her
I just tied my shoes! My grandmother is always positive and never complains so
I love to call her.”
Racheli, a cousin
of mine, advises, “Grandparents must make each child feel important. Never
compare one child to another. Never criticize, although sometimes children
might listen better to grandparents then to their own parents.”
Tova, a
grandmother of close to 100 descendants, keeps a notebook where she records the
name of all her progeny and their birthdates. She also has a calendar, and each
month she prepares birthday cards to send to all the descendants born in that
month. She stocks up on birthday cards at the dollar store. Tova prides herself
on davening for each child, grandchild, and great-grandchild when she lights
the candles each week. Tova gets so many phone calls for brachos before
Yom Kippur that she had to assign each family a day between Rosh Hashanah and
Yom Kippur to call!
I notice that Yehudis’s
house is always full of grandchildren. One child might be reading on the couch,
and another child is checking for nosh in the cabinet. When I asked Yehudis how she does it, she told me
that she works hard on making her house welcoming. She buys all the
publications every week for Shabbos so her grandchildren can sit on the couch
and read, has lots of toys and games, and is always ready to play a game with a
grandchild. After shul on Friday night, her sons and grandsons drop in to be benched,
and she gets a phone call from each of her grandchildren every week on erev Shabbos.
Yehudis’ husband passed away a
little while ago, and she says, “All my grandchildren felt like they lost a
best friend.”
Chana says, “A
grandparent’s job is to be a cheerleader. Our grandchildren crave our
validation. I try to do activities with each child individually, whether it is
a special outing to a park or to get ice cream, or a sleepover with a movie and
popcorn. The main goal is to share memories together. My grandchildren will
remember baking challa, sugar cookies, and pancakes with chocolate chips but,
best of all, sleeping in Nana’s cozy bed.
Miriam described
the relationship between her yeshiva bachur
son and her mother, who called herself a Reform Jew. “My mother was very
accepting and curious about different lifestyles. My son and my mother had a
frequent correspondence and discussed many ideas. My mother wondered how my son
would ever meet a girl to marry as he attended an all-boys school. When my son
explained about the shidduch dating scene, my mother thought it was like
the blind dating that she did as a girl. When my son got engaged, my mother
loved the letters his kallah wrote to her in her beautiful handwriting.
What Do the Grandchildren Say?
My daughter-in-law
Rivka told me about her grandparents. “I grew up very close to my maternal
grandparents. We visited them very often. We spent lots of time swimming in
their pool along with our cousins. We had family birthday parties and many barbecues
together. They babysat for us, took us out to dinner or just joined us on
outings to the mall. We always got a card on our birthdays (with cash) from my
grandmother. They were a constant part of our family life.
“I think our
relationship was so close because my mother was close with her parents, and we
lived in the same city. I only remember my father’s mother as being in a
nursing home with Alzheimers. I felt close to her regardless since we visited
her at least once a week. I am thankful for my father’s devotion to his mother
during this time; it enabled me to develop a relationship with my grandmother
despite her having Alzheimer’s.”
My grandson
Yitzchok, who doesn’t seem to mind being the ambassador for young men when I
ask him for his opinions for my various articles, says, “Young people do not
have the opportunity to be around older people that much, so grandparents are
an opportunity to learn and hear from older people.” Another grandchild added
that because she shares genes with her grandparents their thoughts are much
more interesting.” Rena, a granddaughter, likes having grandparents around
because they are available to help when needed.
Ducie, my cousin’s
granddaughter, described her great relationship with her grandmother: “My
grandparents are the reason that all of my cousins are so close,” she says. “We
love going to my grandmother’s house, shmoozing and spending time together. We
can talk for hours, and my grandmother will be sitting with us and enjoying the
conversation until 2:30 in the morning. My relationship with my grandmother
brings me so much happiness.”
Faraway and Close
Do grandparents
and grandchildren have to live in close proximity in order to be close
emotionally? Well, it helps. My children knew my parents well because we lived
in the same city and spent time together often. My father was able to learn
with my sons, and my mother helped my kids with their homework. Games are much
easier to play on a Shabbos afternoon with children who live close by. Rituals
like getting together for meals, trips, and other activities are easier to plan
with local grandchildren.
Yet there are ways
to express caring. Unlike the aerograms my grandmother wrote, today, it doesn’t
take a week or two to connect. Grandparents can know their grandchildren even
if they live across the ocean. Recently, my daughter’s in-laws came from Eretz
Yisrael. They hadn’t seen our mutual grandchildren for a year but weren’t
strangers to them because they have been skyping every week. The grandchildren
were familiar with them and looked forward to their arrival.
And
of course, close and faraway are relative terms. Sometimes, it’s possible to
be too close! I read a story about a grandmother who lived with her
grandchildren. She was constantly criticizing them in ways that the parents did
not agree with. It caused a lot of stress in the family. Many years later, the
narrator of the story found herself in a similar situation in the home of her
grown children and had to remind herself not to turn into her mother!
Favorites
My friend’s granddaughter
asked her, “Bubby, right I’m your favorite grandchild?” My friend was stumped.
If she said yes, she risked having all the other grandchildren find out about
it. If she answered no, this child, who obviously needed to feel loved, might
feel bad. In the midst of her dilemma, she had a sudden inspiration. “Well,”
she said, “am I your favorite bubby?” The child got the point and chuckled.
Do grandparents
have favorites? Grandparents are people just like everyone else, and I’m sure
that the favorites are the grandchildren who have similar interests, live close,
or initiate contact and respond to the grandparents’ overtures. Yaakov, a
grandfather, told me how much he enjoyed the letters his grandson wrote to him
reporting all the details of his life. One of my grandchildren called me every
week this past year, and that made me feel connected to her. Her efforts
created warm feelings between the two of us. She never missed a week even
though I wasn’t always able to answer the phone.
As
with all relationships, connecting with grandchildren is a balancing act and a two-way street,
in which both the grandchildren and grandparents benefit from efforts. Wishing
all the grandparents and grandchildren who read this article much mazal and
success in building this important relationship.
