Grandmothers are the salt of the earth

She is not too young, but her children have taken their time and got degrees etcetera and only now in the quite modern tradition have begun to produce grandchildren.

I recall with some amusement her raised eyebrows when I first spoke with some appearance of delirium of my first grandson. She thought, quite obviously, that I had begun to suffer from the early stages of reduced capacity due to encroaching old age.

But now pictures are beginning to appear on Facebook, yes even grannies use FB, all of which show images of the newly born in close proximity to grandma or nana and her absence from her home has become legendary. Yes. Grandparenthood is a strange and sometimes contagious condition.

Grannies are the salt of the earth.

They are also the true stuff of myth and legend and over centuries have enabled women to make homes and to have careers. My memory of folklore always included a granny.

She taught through many stories how to behave and what good manners meant. She taught respect for those who are elderly or enfeebled.

When I was growing up many mothers in the Caribbean went outside the home to work. There were a number of dynamic women who forged business dynasties and who wrote books and there were teachers, doctors and lawyers.

Grandmothers facilitated this.

There were one-parent families and the mother was the provider.

The granny was an extension of her love and care. Apart of course from being babysitters whenever a crisis occurred.

When I first went back to teaching after the birth of my son, stories circulated about au pairs and nannies who had been imprisoned for abusing babies. I was abroad. Of course growing up in the Caribbean where the role of childcarer has traditionally almost automatically been given to the grannie I was somewhat bewildered and to say the least terrified. My children had no grandmother to care for them when I was not there, since she was 6,000 miles away.

Today most mothers have to work. We fought as feminists for equal pay and the right to a career at a time when having children or becoming pregnant meant enforced retirement from the Public Service, for example, and there was no such thing as paid maternity leave or any leave after the birth of a baby. Now economic necessity means that even so-called well-todo families have little choice in deciding whether both parents work.

The issue has now become the cost of childcare, which is at an alltime high and the quality and availability of that care. But it is becoming a rarity to see grandmothers assume the role of carer. Of course older women also have careers and continue to be productive well into their seventies and eighties. So the role of the grandmother has changed.

Being a granny does not necessarily equate with being old. Young girls become pregnant at the age of 13 or sometimes even younger and boys of that age can become fathers.

But becoming a grandmother does affect not only one’s status in the world, but also how one feels about life and matters pertaining to perpetuity and the future.

What becoming a grandmother often means is that we see the past returning, sometimes, though not always, “wreathed in disguises,” to quote Kamau Brathwaite. There is something called generational trauma that becomes, I think, genetic.

Whether it is that children try to rectify the damage enacted within the previous generation or whether they repeat the mistakes of their ancestors, the fact is that grandparents often find themselves in the situation where they see the return of patterns of behaviour.

This, perhaps, is where the wisdom of age sets in. But it also brings with it a dilemma.

How does one tell a child that he or she is repeating the issues of the past without appearing to be an interfering woman? How in fact does the older generation pass on its knowledge and wisdom in a manner that will actually change what is to come? Or are we perpetually doomed to repeat mistakes and be caught on the wheel of history?