Grandparent Confidential

Excerpt from the title essay in Eye of My Heart.

I am 58-years-old. I’ve been a grandmother for twelve days. I’m stunned by the swell of feeling: not the love part, I expected that, but the urgency, the hunger to hold Isabelle, to feel her body next to mine. This is love beyond reason and I’m fuzzy on protocol. I don’t know yet where I belong in the new order. In fact, no one seems to know how the pieces of the expanded family puzzle fit together—neither my son, Clay, nor Tamar, his wife and Isabelle’s mother, not Hugh, my husband and the baby’s step-grandfather, nor the rest of the grandparents. We’re as clueless as a bunch of earthlings who go to sleep in their own beds and wake up on the moon.

Before I get to the love part, I must confess that I never expected to be a grandma — not because my son, who is married and will soon turn 40, wasn’t old enough to be a father, but because I never dreamed that I’d be old enough to be a grandmother. Moi, a former 60′s wild child, somebody’s nana? How could this be? Even after I got the news that my daughter-in-law was pregnant and I was moving up a notch in the life cycle, I was as nervous as I was excited. What sort of grandma would I be? Would I remember how to hold a baby or change a diaper? How would I fit into the expanded family circle, in which I would be just one of six grandparents? Would I be as love struck as my nana friends, all of whom seemed so gaga over their grandkids it was as if they’d come down with some sort of viral condition. In other words, how would I measure up?

Some people live in multigenerational households out of necessity. Others do it by design. Some situations are long-term. Others are temporary. Countless practical reasons account for the growing trend — economics, health issues, divorce, childcare needs, relocation, renovation. For Shelley and her partner, Linda; their children, Owen, 9, and Charlie, 6; and Linda’s parents, Tom and Elizabeth, all of whom now share Tom and Elizabeth’s Washington, D.C. home, the decision to live communally was based, along with some practical considerations, on the belief that regular exposure to different generations, talents, and interests — and abundant love — is good for everyone.

Two grandparents, two parents, and two kids, all living under one roof — in perfect harmony? I’m in awe. This bunch could be the model for a contemporary version of The Waltons. They even have a name for their communal arrangement: Project for Intergenerational Living — or PIGL, as they jokingly call it. They have PIGL meetings, PIGL systems, and even a master PIGL schedule.

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