On being a Grandpa

What my father missed and what I’m making sure I won’t

One of my grandsons is three. The other is almost 11 months. I’m 66 going on four.

Here’s how I know.

One day recently, we visited Milwaukee. There, three-year-old Auggie and I played hide and seek. He “hid” in the same place all the time, under a blanket on his downstairs private kiddie couch. I closed my eyes, hunted around the living room for him, feigned surprise every time I found him, and he screamed with glee every time he thought he’d fooled me.

While we played inside, his parents shoveled snow outside. His grandmother walked to the lake with his little brother in tow. After a while, the house fell uncharacteristically silent.

Auggie appeared concerned. He expressed dismay. He looked around.

“The grownups left,” he said.

Never mind my gray hair and Medicare card. As he hid, I sought, and we shrieked, I achieved neotoddler status. The old folks abandoned us. That meant it was just us kids alone in the house.

Call it Grandpa Nirvana.

What my father missed

I write this not to brag but to mourn. Tomorrow marks 28 years since my father died, a month shy of his 74th birthday. For a high school graduate, the son of immigrants, he accomplished much in his too-short life. One thing he never got to do was to be a grandfather. I feel sorry for him.

I’m not saying that everyone has to be a grandfather. Or a father or a parent, for that matter. The parent part is up to you. The grandfather part is totally out of your hands. But once your offspring chooses to become a parent, you win the lottery.

Every once in a while, you’re not a grownup anymore. You’re a Grandpa.

My father, who lived in Philadelphia, died in 1993 when our kids, who lived in Minnesota, were five and three years old. They were in his presence fewer than ten times in their lives. They don’t remember him at all. They missed out on knowing a very sweet guy. He missed out on getting to know the next version of his genes and on getting to know me a little bit better.

One part of grandparenting is watching your kid and his partner become parents; the 21st-century version, of course, tutored by bottomless web advice, not handy how-to books. I remember when we were expecting our first child more than thirty years ago. My wife, the mother-in-waiting, placed a stack of books at her bedside about being a parent. I had no interest. I believed that my father was good at what he did, that he and my mother didn’t ruin me, so I didn’t need any “expert” instructing me on “how to parent.”

The same goes for my kid. He’s an excellent father. A bit more mellow and less frustrated than I think I was. He has a great wife, who is, in fact, a professional in the public schools. Their kids are going to be just fine. Call it white privilege or intergenerational healthy family upbringing. Call it satisfying.

My father missed seeing that in my spouse and me. I wish he had.

Quiet and impish: Remembering my grandfathers

I remember my grandfathers. One died when I was nine, the other when I was 10. I have vague memories of my paternal grandfather. His name was Abe. Our youngest grandson has the same name. My maternal grandfather, Nate, made a larger impression. Our own youngest son is named after him. In our family, the naming baton gets passed.

The original Abe was quiet. He had a shock of white hair. He sat and read. That’s about all I remember. He was known to be one of the fastest cutters in a men’s suit “sweatshop,” and, so, did relatively well financially. My cousins tell me he liked to play checkers and dominoes and was a big fan of professional wrestling, the fake, theatrical televised rumbles. I find that cool. But real interaction between him and me, I don’t remember at all.

I do remember the original Nate more clearly. Jolly and mischievous, he drank a shot of schnapps after dinner. He, too, was a tailor and a cigarette smoker who had a lung removed to cancer in an early operation of its kind. I was the youngest of his seven grandchildren. He played games with me. He held a nickel tightly between his thumb and index finger and, in his thick Russian accent, said to me, “Work, work!” The idea was for me to try to pull the coin from him. I’d try and try, and, finally, he’d let go. I bet I was five or six years old.

On the Jewish high holidays, he spent the day in his synagogue. In the 1960s, World Series games—always day games—and Yom Kippur often coincided. When I was little, we’d break the Yom Kippur fast at my grandparents’ house. My mother and her sisters readied the fast-breaking meal, and I would be glued to the television watching a game. No one was supposed to be watching TV on the high holiday, but the game was my babysitter, and who would know?

Well …

My mother turned off the TV minutes before Grandpop returned from the synagogue. He arrived skeptically, assuming correctly that I’d been watching. With a stern look, he felt the back of the television with his hand to see if it was warm. Soon, the impish smile crossed his round face.

He was joking. Watching the World Series wasn’t a sin. He was fooling around. I remember that.

I joke with my grandson. The other day I offered him the classic riddle, “What do ducks eat for a snack?” The answer, of course, is, “Milk and quackers.” He got it and now has to get his timing and delivery down to make others at his daycare laugh.

My father never got a chance to play games or tell jokes to his grandsons.

Fortunately, our kids had another grandfather, my wife’s father. He lived a long and active life 90 miles away from us and died when our boys were in their thirties. He attended some of their sports events and piano recitals. He was there for their high school and college graduations. He traveled with them on family vacations. He knew they graduated from law school and medical school. He asked about their love lives. He met their spouses and enjoyed one of their weddings. He showed them how to drink martinis. He even met one of his great-grandsons. He showed them how to age gracefully.

My father never got those chances, and I’m delighted our sons got to know one of their Grandpas.

Snuggle, read, sing

The Boomer generation seems to have taken grandparenting to a heightened level. For those of us who are privileged, it means visiting the grandkids often or serving as daycare providers a day or two a week. We try our best to really get to know these kids. We pay attention. For those of us not so privileged, it means being the primary daycare provider while a child works, even, in some cases, it means becoming a surrogate parent. I don’t remember too many grandparents in the 1950s or 60s spending as much time with their grandkids as we do today.

But why not?

“Grandpa, let’s snuggle” is kind of hard to resist.

“I want Grandpa to put me to bed” is a desire easy to satisfy.

“Read a book” is a demand that requires compliance, even if it’s the same book a few dozen times with the same prime suspects, Frog and Toad, Curious George, The Paw Patrol, Bert, Ernie, Big Bird, Dr. Seuss, Pete the Cat, and Corduroy.

Also, I want to assure you, the wheels on the bus go-‘round and ‘round repeatedly, like, all the time.

It’s the kids’ world. I’m just living in it.

I’m helping one to learn to go to the toilet. Watching another eating like a monkey, with food all over his face and hair and the dog strategically located beneath the highchair to scoop up the detritus. Impressed as the little one crawls and discovers the TV zappers, even if they’re scientifically hidden so they shouldn’t be found. Entertained as you snatch him from the floor, and he stares at you wondering, “Who in the world is that guy, and why is he preventing me from the joy of splashing in the dog’s water bowl?”

The cliché is that grandparents can leave the kids and head home to peace and quiet, that being a grandparent brings you all the joy and none of the hard work. In the short term, that’s correct. In the long term, it means making sure to pack in everything you can now. That final departure home could become the last goodbye and the end of the legacy link.

Which is why there are many things I want to do in the next decades of my life. Complete a major book project. Work on another. Travel near and far. But the paramount goal is one I wish my father could have achieved: To grow up with my grandchildren, all the while hoping they’ll remember me.

Thanks to fellow grandfathers Jon Schumacher and Tim Smith for their insights.