SOMETIMES A GRANDMA JUST HAS TO STEP UP

For me, stepping forward for my grandchild has taken several forms.  Sometimes it’s been trying to make the immediate, surrounding environment a better, more positive place.  Sometimes it’s been setting an example by speaking up.  My favorite of all, is when I can pass on something of myself, of who I was growing up and who I am in the present so my grandkid can know me better, and take good memories of our time together into the future long after I’m gone. 

Here are three times this grandma did her best to step up to the task of trying to wear the Super Grandma cape.   I fell a little short with the first one, but I can take pride in the other two.

Oops, My Bad

We all know that the best of intentions is sometimes misguided, but in this case, I had a little help in my decision to act.  There were signs on city buses and on the train that read “if you see something, say something”.  They were referring to unattended packages or bags, but I felt they were just as relevant to the current situation.

One day I was riding the train into downtown Houston with my daughter and grandkid.  A few seats behind us a middle-aged man was looking down at his lap making loud moaning, groaning and sometimes ecstatic sounds.  They varied in pitch, volume and intensity to a disconcerting degree. 

I kept glancing down at my grandchild’s face to see if the noise was an issue, but the kid didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on.  Oh, sweet innocence, and I wanted to help keep it that way. 

When we got to our stop, I had my daughter and grandkid get off first, while I went back to the “gentleman” to have a word with him about appropriate behavior in public, especially when young children were around. 

To my surprise, I saw that what he was holding in his lap was not what I expected.  It was his cell phone, and he was in the middle of watching a football game.

In relief I blurted out, “Oh, thank goodness.  I thought you were masturbating!”  In a matter of seconds, he went from a look of confusion to shock, to bursting into reverberating belly laughs.  I could still hear him laughing when I got off the train. 

It wasn’t my intention to start his day off with laughter, but I was glad I could help.  

Oh, I Don’t Think So!        

The next situation that comes to mind involved a close encounter as my grandkid and I walking along the crosswalk going into a Target store in Houston.  We were about half-way through the crosswalk when a car sped up, cutting very close in front of us.  We could have both been hit.  As he passed, I swung my purse up and slammed it down on the trunk of his car to let him know just how close he got to us.   

As we were standing in line at the Customer Service counter at the front of the store the man who had been driving the car came up to us and confronted me about slamming my purse on his car.  If he thought his rough, burley, 6-foot self was going to make me uncomfortable he was dead wrong.  No one messes with my loved ones.  I told him that by trying to cut us off he almost hit us.  He stood there trying to intimidate me with a mean look on his face.  But he was no match for a 5’1” pissed off grandma.  After a few moments of me silently glaring at him with my evil eye stare, he quietly slunk away. 

It was important to me that my grandkid see firsthand how to stand up to a bully. 

Alternative Entertainment in the Age of Cell Phones

My very favorite way of stepping forward for my grandchild was and continues to be through shared experiences; the passing on of things that I had learned, especially from my childhood. 

A cross-county road trip from Texas to Oregon and Washington with my daughter and the kid was a perfect time for sharing, especially since Grandma limited cell phone time while traveling through amazingly beautiful country. 

We visited the land of fire and ice at the Ice Cave and Bandera Volcano on the Continental Divide in New Mexico.  We visited the Acoma Pueblo, located on a high plateau in New Mexico, still home to a small group of Pueblo people.  It has been continuously occupied for over 2,000 years. 

As we were standing in the Catholic church our guide told us of how the cruel treatment of the Pueblo people by the Spanish priest who forced them to build the church, had angered the people so much that they threw him over the cliff to his death. 

I couldn’t protect my grandkid from hearing that story, but again, there was no indication that the kid was bothered by such a gruesome story.  Perhaps I have World of Warcraft, a popular computer game at the time, to thank for my grandchild’s ability to take such things in stride. 

In Arizona we went to a wolf sanctuary, ancient ruins of pre-pueblo people and then on to the Grand Canyon.  We mostly camped along the way, with a one-night stay in a teepee, a couple nights in KOA cabins, and the occasional motel room. 

My favorite part of the entire trip was spent sharing childhood memories of my hometown and the many special places where we had family picnics as I was growing up. 

Helmick State Park was just a few miles south of where we lived in Monmouth Oregon, and the location of many spur-of-the-moment family picnics. 

The Luckiamute River ran through the park, but at that point it was more of a muddy creek than a river, and that’s where my brothers and I spent many summer afternoons wading into the water to splash and cool off. 

I loved the mud squishing between my toes, but I had to watch out that I didn’t step on crawdads that would pinch me if I got too close.  I shared all this with my grandkid as we were wading into the water.  I told her about how, to my utter amazement those same crawdads were called crawfish in the South and were a favorite food among Cajun people, something I learned when I went to my first Crawfish Festival in Houston. 

The best part of our time on the muddy bank of the Luckiamute was seeing my grandkid had no fear when I taught her how to catch a garden snake.  I was fascinated by snakes when I was growing up.  Snakes, salamanders, crawdads, all were fascinating to me, but my favorite was the garden snakes, sometimes referred to as garter snakes.   

As we were walking along the banks of the river I spotted a garden snake.  I told the kid it was not venomous and could safely be picked up by quickly grabbing it right behind the head so it couldn’t bite. 

My grandchild was as fearless and as fascinated by the snake as I was when I was a kid.  One quick leap forward, and in an instant the snake was held high for inspection.  It immediately began wrapping itself around my grandkid’s hand. 

The look of joy on the kid’s face remains vivid in my mind to this day.  I must admit, this continues to be my favorite memory of the entire trip. 

It is my hope that the memory of this experience will remain with my grandchild for years and years.  Just to make sure, I have saved this memory in a photograph that I’ll pass on to the kid when the time is right. 

I also have a few potentially embarrassing photos of the kid from the trip that I’ll pass on slowly overtime just for fun. 

It’s good to be a grandma.