Is it possible to be different as a grandmother than you were as a mother? Natasha Farrant believes so. Here's why...
Natasha Farrant
Do you have to be a good mother to be a good grandmother?
Posted on: Thu 15-Oct-15 11:54:32
(41 comments )
"They were supremely jealous of each other, and I once saw them engage in a bare-knuckled seafood eating contest"
Both my grandmothers were impossible women. One was a total eccentric, encouraged us to lick our plates clean after dessert and to sunbathe naked on public (non-nudist) beaches. The other insisted on always using a proper butter knife, but drank whisky with our boyfriends late into the night. The naked sunbather had a passion for horoscopes. The whisky drinker was never without a book, and was re-reading War and Peace for the third time when she died.
They were vain, selfish, snobbish and autocratic. They were impeccably dressed, perfectly made up and extremely glamorous (the one favouring bright colours and flowing cashmere, the other impeccable tailoring). They were supremely jealous of each other, and I once saw them engage in a bare-knuckled seafood eating contest, only barely disguised as a polite lunch in a quayside restaurant on the French Atlantic coast. "It tastes of the sea!" they cried, cramming their mouths as live creatures tried to make a run for it across the linen tablecloth.
With the passage of time, my grandmothers have acquired mythical status. Two world wars, emigration, bereavement, fortunes made, fortunes lost, a bombed house, a lost child, a tragic love affair. Summers spent with our feet in the sand, winter walks on foggy beaches, a medieval French town by the sea, a vegetable garden with tomatoes the size of apples, mysterious objects such as grapefruit spoons – grapefruit spoons! – belonging to past eras, a bright green Renault 5 stuffed with cousins, a string of badly behaved cocker spaniels…
Distant and neglectful of their own children, they were lavish towards their grandchildren and they have so stamped themselves upon my imagination that I have yet to write a book in which they do not feature.
Western society isn't great at marking rites of passage, or at defining major roles. In my own bumpy transition to motherhood, I didn't stop to think too much about the transition my own mother and mother-in-law were going through. Caregiver, babysitter, educator, treat-giver, confidante – what is a grandmother supposed to be? Nan, Nana, Gran, Grandma – Babushka, Granna, Mere. What is she even supposed to be called? In many countries, it is grandmothers who are the primary care-givers. Many women who come to work in the UK choose to leave their children to be brought up in their home country by their own mothers. Conversely, I have friends whose parents have told them not to expect help with their grandchildren – "I've done my time, now it's your turn."
Distant and neglectful of their own children, they were lavish towards their grandchildren
What role exactly should grandmothers play in their grandchildren's lives? My mother and mother-in-law's approaches to first time grandmothering were characteristically different. One became mildly affronted at the suggestion of routines to be followed ("I've had four children, I know what I'm doing"). The other wanted lists of instructions so she could replicate exactly what we did ("Everything is so different now"). I tried hard to relinquish control in the former case, and to assure the latter that what I wanted more than anything was for her to develop her own relationship with my child. I have been incredibly lucky that both women have wanted to be involved with my children from the very first day, each in her way providing precious support, including for lengthy periods during the school holidays.
As the children have become teenagers, they think nothing of hopping on a train to visit for a night or a week. They text, they email, they chat on the phone. They know that they can turn to their grandmothers for advice and support, and that they will hear a different message from them than from me. Sometimes I will agree, sometimes I won't, but that doesn't matter. As the girls grow up, they have to form their own opinions, and their grandparents are able to offer them different wisdoms and perspectives.
I am so grateful that for all the rows and differences between my parents and their respective mothers (there were many, and they ran deep), neither party allowed those divisions to come between grandparents and grandchildren. If they had, I would never have heard first hand stories of the war, or learned that it is perfectly acceptable to go out to buy fish in turquoise silk pyjamas. I would not have War and Peace on my bedside table, and I might not know that walking barefoot on the beach in winter is the best feeling in the world. I would not have travelled to France to kiss my grandfather one last time as he lay dying, or fed my grandmother raspberries in her final days, and I would not have the relationships I do with my cousins and uncles and aunts. They were both, in many ways, terrible role models. I certainly don't model my parenting on theirs, or even on my relationship with them. But that, to me, was never the point. For all their faults and eccentricities, my grandmothers opened my eyes to the world in ways that no one else could, and my children's grandmothers are doing the same for them.
What do you think is the principal role of grandmothering? I would really like to know.
Natasha's latest book All About Pumpkin is published by Faber, and features a very stubborn grandmother and her equally stubborn grandchildren. It's available now from Amazon.
