Apr 23, 2009 - 04:30 AM
By Neil Crone
My children have a very different relationship with their grandparents than I did mine. When I was a kid, going to Gramma's house was not really something I looked forward to. It was more something to be endured.
I think things might have been vastly different had my granddad not died when I was very little. He was a pretty fun guy. He liked a laugh and he liked the occasional snoot full. A few years in the trenches of Flanders gave him some perspective that my grandmother never got. I think a month or two in no-mans-and might've loosened her up a bit.
Don't get me wrong. My gramma was a nice lady. She was always kind and generous and I know she loved us dearly, but I would never have described her as fun. I don't think I ever saw her laugh really hard. Which was a shame, because, as she was quite fond of proclaiming in her latter years to anyone who would listen, she still had her own teeth.
So yes, getting into the car to make the drive to Gramma's house was never something I was really psyched for. A trip to Gram's usually meant hours of either sitting in her living room and surreptitiously emptying her candy dish while she and my mom talked in the kitchen or lying on the hallway floor furnace grate until my cheeks hurt. Mesmerized by the pilot light behind the glass. Not exactly a hoot.
And I would've liked to have had a hoot with my Gramma. My kids do. They have a ball with my mom and dad. Because my mom and dad are fun. It's as simple as that. They like to laugh.
I'm tickled that my kids have been witness to such scenes as my sweet, little, octogenarian mother gleefully flipping me the bird in the middle of a heated card game, my dad's practised, wickedly-funny bar-room commentary that accompanies any table-top recreation and his hilariously-inappropriate rendition of Under the Village Chestnut Tree.
I don't think I'll ever forget the look on my boy's faces the first time he dropped that bomb on them. I couldn't have been any more delighted than if I'd heard my own Gramma step up with "There once was a man from Nantucket..."
I'm equally thrilled that my parents listen to their grandchildren, genuinely like them and, most importantly, let them know it. There is real affection there, from both sides. And what a remarkable gift that is.
I never knew my dad's dad. He died when my own father was only 14. I knew my grandmother on my dad's side briefly and I always enjoyed her Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving visits, but she, like my maternal grandmother, was always just kind of a distant, wrinkled presence in my life. I loved them both but I can't honestly say that I really liked either one. For that matter, I'm unsure whether they even liked me. We didn't know each other well enough.
I can remember quite distinctly when I stopped being just my parent's son and was able to become their friend. That's a great moment. I can now see it happening with my kids and their grandparents. And I think it's largely a testament to my folks. To their love, their caring and most importantly, their sense of humour. And isn't that essentially what parenting and grandparenting are all about? Or should be?
Durham resident Neil Crone, actor-comic-writer, saves some of his best lines for his columns.
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