Wednesday, March 5, 2008

The art of grandparenting

Before our grandson Finn was born we were feeling a certain anxiety, wondering how we would react when that little guy would appear in front of us. We were somehow looking for a version of “Grandparenting for dummies,” but after searching a bit, we found that out of a plethora of books in that series, this title wasn’t available; so much for that crutch! At any rate, when we first met Finn, we immediately fell under the spell of that tiny human being and he started to grow on us as soon as we laid our eyes on him and held him into our arms. We had simply forgotten that when we were built, we also were “bundled” with special grandparent software that lay dormant in a back corner of our brains or a strand of our DNA, just like the “parent” version that we used a quarter of a century ago and have since almost forgotten about. A few keystrokes and that was it, we opened up and installed the application in a matter of seconds. Finn’s face is now burned into our mind’s eye; we can recall it in an instant and could easily find him out of a thousand other babies. We’re just amazed how fast we’re catching up and won’t need “Grandparenting for dummies” after all, even tough I since discovered that there’s such a book as the “Complete Idiot's Guide to Grandparenting.” So there’s still hope, just in case we’re patented idiots and can’t figure how to carry out our new job!

No comments: