Author Archives: Barbara Graham

Ok, so I realize I’ve kvetched about being a long-distance grandmother. I’ve wept over the fact that I can’t spontaneously pick Isabelle up at school or spend the morning playing princess with Azalia. Sad. True. On the bright side, when I do go to visit, I don’t wind up in Nowhere, North Dakota. (Apologies to North Dakotans: I’m sure you’re state is lovely.) I go to Paris (not Paris, Texas, the other one). I play with the girls in the Jardin du Luxembourg. We eat Berthillon ice cream and watch the boats go by on the Seine. I’m leaving Sunday for two weeks and am totally psyched–to get my hands on those two little girls, under Paris skies, which stay light until about 11 p.m. as we approach the solstice. Stay tuned for more from the Ile de France!

I’ve had it every which way: Grandchildren in my neighborhood, grandchildren on the other side of the Atlantic, grandchildren across the continental United States. In each instance, the same grandchildren. My heart has been broken. I have cried into my pillow. I have longed to live in simpler times (with indoor plumbing) when families weren’t scattered willy-nilly across the globe. Alas.

My mother loved my son and my brother’s kids—just as her mother loved us—but neither woman seemed as gaga and blotto as my friends and I do. My mother and grandmother didn’t seem to obsess and worry the way we do, either.

I can’t help wondering if this intense, emotional teenage crush state is generational. After all, didn’t we boomers rethink parenthood, along with having it all, stay-at-home dads, raising (if not breaking) the glass ceiling, and other trends that took off in the latter part of the 20th century? And now aren’t we doing the same with grandparenthood?