Just Call Me Gran

Wallsy and I became grandparents for the first time this week.  

What a wondrous thing it is to welcome your children’s children into the world.

When the text message bearing the news pinged onto our phones, and we opened it to see a photo of this new little human miracle right there on our screens, we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. We did both, while attempting to compose a suitable message of congratulations and welcome, through our tears of joy.

Yesterday, we met baby Jack and had our first cuddles of this precious, tiny person, who so far seems oblivious to all the attention he is attracting. He has besotted parents, 3 sets of doting grandparents, and aunties and uncles to love him, not to mention the many friends of his parents who will also become his friends and mentors, but he seems keen to sleep through all the fuss.

Of course, with his arrival came the question of what each of us would like to be known as. There are so many options: nan, nanna, pop, pa, grandad, grandpa, grandma, gran, granny, gramps, nonna and nonno, oma and opa, and so the list goes on. I contemplated grand-mere and grand-pere or grand-maman and grand-papa, but those labels seem a little stiff and formal and I’m not sure Wallsy and I fit the picture painted by titles such as those.

When making the selection, there are the other grandparents to consider too, some of whom may already have grandchildren and therefore, will already have an established title. There are many factors which come into play, but when Wallsy settled on Grandpa, the obvious choice for me was Grandma.

I was surprised at how vehemently and negatively I reacted to the name ‘Grandma’, however.

I only had one grandparent as a child – known to all and sundry as Grandma Shea. I was still quite young when she passed away, but my memory of this gentle, quiet, unassuming lady is of her appearance as the quintessential, story-book grandma. Her white hair was always dragged back into a neat bun, never a hair out of place. She was small of stature, rounded, with glasses perched on the end of her nose, and always wore an apron – one of those voluminous ones with large pockets on the front – and she smelt of lavender.

I remember cups of tea and cakes in the kitchen of her home in Bridgewater, where I was always perched on the long stool in front of the window, my parents at either end of the table , and Grandma and her sister, Auntie Carrie, sitting opposite me. This arrangement meant that I had to either ask one of my parents, to move, or I had to slither off the stool and crawl out under the table between the legs of the adults, if I wanted to escape the grown-up talk and go and enjoy the back yard on my own.

So, with that picture of the only person I ever knew called ‘Grandma’ firmly lodged in my memory, I found I baulked at the title for myself, now that it is my turn to assume the honour of being a grandmother. The image I have of myself does not mesh with the image the name presents to me. Therefore, after much deliberation, I settled on Gran.

My parents didn’t want to be given a title. My children called them simply Edna and Jack, but I want baby Jack to know his relationship to us, so we have chosen names which are indicative of the generational connection we have with him. I can’t wait to hear him form the words and call us Gran and Grandpa. That will surely be another emotional moment for us both.

That said, of course, children aren’t always able to get their tongues around all the words and names they encounter when they first begin to speak, and approximations abound. ‘Meemaw’ and ‘Gaga’, ‘Gma’ and ‘Gpa’ for example, but as we journey into the unique and special relationship that defines grandparents and grandchildren, I don’t really mind what our grandson Jack calls us, as long as he knows we are his grandparents and how much we love him.