I’m fortunate to have a daughter who is so gifted a photographer, I haven’t seen my granddaughter Robin for a year now, but I feel I have stayed close to her through Emma’s beautiful and sensitive photographs.
I’ve watched her start to grow up, and move from being a cute baby to a striking young woman. I love the pictures Emma takes of her daughter, they bring them both very close to me.
As I suspected, life has kept me from being especially close to Robin. She lives in a different world than I do and while we do connect, it is in a glancing way.
I am not a regular part of her life, and she is rarely involved or even sees mine. I marvel at the people who tell me having a grandchild is the best thing that has ever happened to them.
I love Robin, and I love her mother. But I want my life to be the best thing that ever happened to me, not somebody else. Maybe something is just missing inside of me.
But Emma is happy in her life and so is Robin. That’s really what I want for them to be happy.
That distance is neither a tragedy nor a happy thing. It is just the way our lives have turned out. I will be 80 when she is ten, and I don’t see a lot of change down the road.
I have some wonderful photos of Robin on my Iphone, but I almost never show them to people. I’m not comfortable on Zoom or Facetime, I feel like an idiot babbling away.
I don’t see why anyone else would need to see pictures of my granddaughter.
Maybe I’m too guarded to embrace this in the way. Perhaps I’m protecting myself from the disappointment of living so far apart and so differently.
When I go to Brooklyn now, I feel like I’m in a foreign country. Everything – everything – is different. Once I would have cut off a finger to live there. Now, I can’t imagine it.
Visiting Robin is complex, and difficult. I feel like I’m intruding on someone else’s life, disrupting other people, putting pressure on them to entertain and occupy me. They are busy, they have a lot to do.
In April, Maria and I are going to meet her and Emma and Jay at the Bronx Zoo. I’m very much looking forward to seeing Emma, Jay, and Robin again.
Then we will go our own ways and move along with ours lives. I realize now that when I moved to the country, I became something of a refugee in both worlds, I love where I live, but I will always be a refugee.
Zoom and Facetime have helped, even if it isn’t comfortable for me. We talk often, but not easily.
We just don’t really know one another that well. We do have a few jokes we tell each other. I sent her gifts regularly, and I’m getting good at sending things she will like.
We last saw one another at the zoo last March, the day before New York State locked down. It’s fitting that we will see her at the zoo again, just a little over a year from then.
I loved our visit, so did Maria. So, I think did Robin and her family. I accept the way life has organized this. It is what I expected. And it seems like a beautiful thing to me.
What a lovely photo of a happy, carefree child. Joy simply radiates from her. I feel so fortunate to have my grandchildren nearby and I suppose that fact must have changed the depth of our relationship. They easily became such important pieces of an already wonderful life – pieces of me. They filled spaces I didn’t know were empty. I take comfort in knowing I am a much better grandmother than I was a mother. I got a second chance. I am certainly wiser and richer for having them. Hopefully they will look back one day and say the same of me.
If you cant see why anyone would need to see pictures of our Robin, how do you go on? With pictures of our dogs, pictures of anything really. I say our carefully, because only you have made them ours. I too, could feel, am intruding on some one else’s life. Yours and Maria’s and all that is shared . But you’ve invited me so I feel at home. You’ve been invited too. Have the best time.
Interesting Rose, food for thought, thanks.
Jon…
When we uproot from our “old home” environments and start anew, the price for the new life experience is to cede our alternative existences.
What I once had called home no longer existed; it stopped being that when I left. At best, visions and imaginings from these homes are replayed from the past, as real life there moves on.
I speak with family who still live were we were raised. Yet, I can’t comprehend from these conversations, the many ways how our previous home, and life there, might have changed.
• Several generations ago, South Beach was home to European ethnic seniors and retirees. Idle hours were spent in the sun to cultivate a dark tan – considered a sign of good health.
• But later, from a distance, it became depicted as the home for “Miami Vice” and the drug culture. Afternoon movie matinees, Kosher restaurants, and casual people-watching from metal armchairs on hotel porches – all had disappeared.
• Cubans became the tenured residents, more recently joined by Haitians, Venezuelans and other Latin Americans.
• And Spring Break was transformed from the carefree ritual portrayed in “Where the Boys Are”, to riotous and destructive mobs prompting the mayor to declare a State of Emergency.
Yet I still see rustling palms and blooming red hibiscus.
I am a grandparent in a similar fashion. Social media and all else out there makes it seem as if our children and grandchildren are vital to our existence. Thanks for the astiue perception.
Dear Jon…..
Thank you for your most welcome writing today. Your sharing about little Granddaughter sparked a thought for me!
I would suggest you have her for a “Farm vacation”!
My husband Les related stories about “my Grandparents Farm”, when we first met. That was the highlight each summer for him, traveling from Detroit to Canada!
Seems like a winner to me!
Thanks for listening.
Thanks Barbara, she’s not into the farm much. We’re doing fine.
Great Photo, worth framing
Robin is getting tall! I love photos of children who are so joyful that they leave the ground and you are able to catch them with the camera right at that second! I have a similar photo of my three recently adopted long-distance grandchildren chasing balloons. Much excitement and literally off the ground! I can’t be there with them but it’s so nice to be able to receive the pictures.
forgive me for being so forthright but maybe your over thinking the visit abit. There might be a little shyness at first on both sides but I get the feeling Robin knows her grandfather. Relax and just let it flow.
Your daughter is a very gifted artist. Her pictures speak in a thousand languages.
Her pictures a universal thread seen by the heart no matter where a person lives.
Thanks, Alexa, I appreciate your concern, you are not being too forthright, just honest, but I’m comfortable with my thinking about it. This works for both of us. We don’t all have to think about grandparenting in the same way. We just arent around each other much, and I don’t see that changing.