I'm becoming a grand-girlfriend today. My soon-to-be POSSLQ's (Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters, as the U.S. Census Dept. calls him) daughter is having a baby, his first grandchild.
Moving a notch down the chain of mortality does strange things to your outlook. I thought grandkids would be trouble-free. You spoil 'em, they giggle when they see you, and when they whine or poop in their pants, you can hand them over to their parents. What a deal!
Then I think about my own parents, my kids' grandparents. And I realize how many heartaches they've endured over the hard knocks my kids have taken. In some ways, grandparenthood is worse than being a parent. You love the little buggers and feel even more helpless when bad things happen to them. You're a generation removed.
They say that becoming a parent is one of the greatest acts of courage, because you've allowed your heart to go walking around outside your body. It may be doubly so for grandparents--you ache for your own child, who suffers when her child does, and for the grandchild, too.
My life has been a series of events that broke me open, softened me up and made me tougher at the same time. I look at one of my young co-workers, who tells me he needs to "learn to be more compassionate" to colleagues who don't pull their weight.
I tell him, "It comes with age. The longer you're around, the more chances you have to screw up. And you realize how many times you deserved the hammer to fall on you, but for some unknown reason it didn't. Then you stop wishing for the hammer to fall on someone else."
Although I'm much too young to be anybody's grandmother, for godsakes, even being the significant other of a grandfather makes me feel different. Life snuck up on me. I'm busy having my nails done and worrying about filing my income taxes late, and the next thing you know, mortality taps me on the shoulder.
I am getting older. One day, I'll be old. In the last few days, I've gotten emails about a co-worker's 40-something fiance' dying from a sudden stroke. And a colleague's sister being killed suddenly in a car wreck. And one of my dearest mentors going in for open-heart surgery.
These things happen to other people, not me. Right? Like being a grandparent. That's not me. Not yet. No way I'm old enough to be that uncool....
