| |
 |
 |
 |
Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
A NEW MEMBER OF THE FAMILY 2005-11-12 Last Tuesday, I became a grandmother for the third time when Madeline Claire came into the world and became a member of a large and loving extended family. While my daughter was in the hospital, I took care of my other grandchildren Sean (4) and Grace (2) whose births were also occasions for celebration. I was privileged to actually see my grandson's birth and remember vividly how much he looked like my daughter at the moment of her birth. I will never forget that first glimpse of the dimple on his cheek. I heard my first granddaughter before I actually saw her as my husband and I were in the waiting room with Sean when she was born. But my first glimpse of her pink cheeks and strawberry blond hair was another extraordinary moment. Seeing your newborn grandchild, I have concluded, is witnessing a miracle. When Madeline was born, I was again the designated baby-sitter while my son-in-law stayed overnight at the hospital with his wife and new baby. Though my husband joined me for one of the days, I handled most of the grandparenting duties. I put the children to bed and got up with Grace when she woke up in the middle of the night. I don't consider this an unusual responsibility for a grandmother. Many grandmothers perform this function, at least the grandmothers that live nearby or can afford the time and money to hop on a plane. And while the four days I was with the children were exhausting, they were also a great deal of fun. I will never forget some of the antics of the kids, or the heartbreaks. Sean, for instance, wanted to talk on the phone to his mom on her first night away. At first the conversation went well, and then he started to cry and said "I really miss you." By the time the conversation was over, my daughter and I were both crying. Grace, never having been away from her mother, had a hard time getting to sleep and woke up once or twice, disoriented that Grammy and not mommy was there to put her back in bed. Other moments were more humorous, like the time Sean, disappointed that his new sibling was a sister, commented to me that "since Madeline has short hair, maybe she will turn into a boy." Taking care of my grandchildren was a privilege that I wouldn't trade for anything. It was also good for them. While they know I love them and they trust me to care for them almost as well as their mother does, they also had an opportunity to grow up a little as they courageously endured a few days without the most important person in their lives. They learned to be patient as they waited for mommy to come home, and they learned to lean on each other for comfort and security. The place of grandmothers in the lives of their grandchildren is getting some attention from scholars these days. Some evolutionary scientists believe that women live longer than men because of what they call the "grandmother hypothesis" which simply suggests that women who live longer contribute more to the survival of their grandchildren than do women who die earlier. By directly helping to protect and nurture their grandchildren, as I did last week, they ensure that their genes will survive into the next generation. Men, on the other hand, who do not do as much caretaking and thus do not contribute as much to the survival of their grandchildren, have no such advantage in securing the survival of their genes. The grandmother hypotheses suggests that this is why many women live longer than their male counterparts. I don't know whether or not the grandmother hypothesis is true, but my experience tells me that many grandmothers play a significant and crucial role with their grandchildren. Actually, the entire extended family can play a crucial role in raising children and grandchildren, as well as caring for aging parents and providing support for anyone in the clan who needs it. Who, after all, is going to love you enough to take care of you when you need help if not the members of your family? Unfortunately, with relocations due to promotions, job changes and the desire for increased opportunity or a more desirable climate, the closely knit extended family is becoming an endangered species. The novelist Kurt Vonnegut, in his latest book, addresses the importance of extended family. He says "A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It is a terribly vulnerable survival unit." He goes on to tell the story of a man he met in Nigeria, "an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family. They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages, shapes and sizes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty or how handsome it was." "Wouldn't you have loved to be that baby?" he asks his readers, and then wishes he could "wave a wand" and give them all an extended family. Madeline has an extended family, of course, although not everyone is close enough to hop on over and visit as often as they might like. I counted the members of her extended family the other day and came up with four grandparents, six great-grandparents, four uncles, four aunts, one cousin, six great uncles and six great aunts, seven second cousins (the children of her parents' cousins), one born the day after Madeline's birth, and nineteen first cousins, once removed (her mother and father's cousins.) That's sixty-seven people, not six hundred, but it still qualifies as an extended family in my book. My wish for Madeline is that she always be surrounded by the love of her immediate as well as extended family, that her brother and sister provide her with many opportunities for adventure, that her parents always be able to protect her from harm, that her grandparents and aunts and uncles spoil her just a little, that the world becomes the kind of place she deserves to grow up in, one where children of all ages are nurtured and protected, where war is unthinkable and peace is the norm, where no one is ever hungry or mistreated, and where all the people of the world learn to live as extended family members, supporting each other as well as the planet which sustains them. Welcome to your family, Madeline! You may only be five days old, but you are loved more than you know. |