Two Different Kinds of Grandmas

This blog will surely come back to haunt me because I'll be talking about living people who are still very active in the world.  Slander, it is not.  Love is what it is.

Once upon a time, my daughter was married to the son of another local Plainfield family.  Over the course of their seven-year marriage, complete with two children, both sets of parents worked hard to help them out however we could.  We functioned as one big family.  My daughter's husband's parents became my friends, separate from just the union of our kids.  We attend the same church, have the same values, and share common grandchildren, but that's about where the similarities end.  When our children divorced, we kept on being grandparents without prejudice.  We understood each of our children's contributions to their failed marriage, but we stuck together for the sake of our grandchildren.

The "other grandma" and I have come to be known as Grandma Judy and Grandma Peggy over the years.  (Grandma McNary didn't fit for me because that was my daughter's grandmother's name, so we went with first names.)  I love Grandma Judy.  I'm also envious of her energy, especially since she is six years older than I and can run circles around what I can do now.  Honestly, I don't know why she isn't exhausted all the time!

Grandma Judy sings in the church choir.  She is also the Church Historian, the wife of the chief cook for the Homeless Mission for the church.  She is part of a church group that sews things for missions.  She does water aerobics twice a week at the Rec Center.  She is a long-time member of Weight Watchers and attends meetings every week.  She is a very active member of the local Home Extension group for our county.  She also was part of a hospital guild for the church, plus the glue that holds her scattered family of four children and four grandchildren together, not to mention cousins, nieces, nephews...and me.  I'm sure I've missed a few.

Judy is a retired nurse, which makes her--by temperament and profession--a caregiver.  And care, she does!  She and her husband both do things for others--rides to doctor's appointments, food for people unable to get around, feeding friends' pets when the owners have to be away...and privately caring for her live-in son who has Parkinson's Disease, and dealing with her own aches and pains.  When I tore the meniscus in my knee, it was Grandma Judy who came over with a wheelchair to take me to the ER...brought food...shopped for things I needed in the course of my recovery, (and it was her husband who took me to surgery).  She didn't do it only because she is my friend.  She did it because that's the way she is.  I once embarrassed myself by commenting to a petulant child who said she liked Grandma Judy because "she is nice to me", by saying, "Grandma Judy is nice to everyone!"  I was trying to focus on G. Judy's sweetness but made it sound like an insult to the child.  (I've never forgiven myself for that one!)

Grandma Judy has a sweet/soft voice.  Almost syrupy.  Delightfully so.  She is the epitome of Suzy Homemaker.  She sews.  She bakes.  She sets a beautiful table.  She has pie birds and makes bread in the shape of a bunny for Easter and just generally makes life pleasant for everyone around her.

And then there's me.
I'm just not that attentive, I guess.  My family never put much store into frillies.  We were farm people, pretty much meat-and-potatoes kind of folk.  My mother was an excellent cook, but she didn't cook fancy, and I never learned to do that.  We didn't care if a dish looked good.  We just wanted it to taste good...and that was the focus.  It took me YEARS to learn how to make gravy without lumps, which was (according to my mother) was the mark of a good cook.

Baking wasn't my mother's forte'.  She would bake occasionally, but a cake wouldn't last long enough to actually get frosted.  We kiddos would beg for a piece while it was still warm...and then it was gone.  Poof!  Mom baked pies using Crisco or lard--a big no-no these days.  I gave up long ago trying to mimic the pies of my youth, but I CAN make a mean pot roast.

I can sew.  Did most of my sewing/knitting/crocheting/cross stitch when my daughter was young.  I find that the newer generations don't care quite so much about homemade things as we once did.  Why put that much effort into something that is no longer in vogue?  Case in point, I crocheted an entire tablecloth and many, many doilies.  Just see if you can find doilies now!  I even crocheted a shrug for my granddaughter for a community pageant that she was in, but she didn't wear it on the actual night of performance.  I gave up.

Grandma Judy is soft and quiet and creative.  I am hard and loud and practical.  I think I've only seen her cry a couple of times...but I weep daily.  Not sure what that means, but I understand the dynamic.  She holds things in; I blurt things out.  She tends to minute details; I usually want to cut right to the main point.  She is surrounded by people; I live alone.  We really aren't much alike, but I appreciate her and wish I were more of what she is.  She has taught me how to look beyond self to care for others--not something foreign to me, but in need of tweaking.  Who knows?  Maybe she feels the same way about some gift I have?

So, who wins?  Our grandchildren!  I've thought about this quite a bit through the years.  Our shared grandchildren are in their mid-teens now and live a couple of thousand miles away.  They still need grandmas who love them, and they have that, in spades!  Grandma-ism isn't a competition.  Grandma Judy is the one who will think of every holiday and celebration for them.  Grandma Peggy is the one who will ask them questions about how they think or feel and spend unnecessary money just to let them know I care.  There is room in life for both.  Judy and I have rejoiced, grieved, worried, cried, and prayed over these grandbabies together.  When we reach the Pearly Gates, God Almighty cannot blame us for causing schisms within our grandchildren's world because it doesn't happen, and that is as it should be.  Our grandchildren are the ones who benefit from having grandmothers of a different ilk working together for them.

I only had one grandmother.  My father's mother died before I was born; thus, all of my "grandma eggs" were in one basket.  I adored that woman for reasons I can't even say.  I only know that I watched the love between my mother and her mother, and knew that I wanted some of that when I grew up and had a family of my own.  I never dreamed then that the love would reach into another family whose care for me has been over the top.

May God bless the grandmas of the world!