Unfiltered Thoughts of an Expectant Grandfather plus the Grandparent "Cult"

I used to often ask the hypothetical question of “Would you rather meet one of your great, great grandparents or one of your great, great, grandchildren?” ¹

If events proceed as hoped for, I will in November become a grandfather for the first time, and my ancestor/descendent question will take a step from the strictly hypothetical toward the direction of the actual.

My oldest grandparent, who I spent a lot of time with and knew well, was born in 1905. His great, great grandson is due to be born in 2022, a span of 117 years. I was born in 1962 and so I occupy the third, middle, stone of this five generation arch, almost perfectly equidistant from the births of the first and fifth generations.

While “1905” and “2022” will never meet, 2022 will come to learn a great deal about his 1905 ancestor. And I’ll be able to ponder the joy 1905 might have had in meeting 2022.

Almost everyone I speak to says being a grandparent is the best thing that’s ever happened to them. Over and over, with remarkable consistency, I hear, “You just can’t imagine how great it is!”

I expect that will be true for me too, but I wanted to set down these thoughts before I join the grandparent cult and a cute grandchild turns my grandparent brain into mush.  

When I became a father, it all happened so fast, and as a young parent the time frames of my thoughts were short. I had no thoughts of long generational spans; I was more concerned  about day to day matters like work and schedules and whether I would ever conquer the mechanics of opening and closing the stroller (nope, never did).

But now that I’m older, I think in longer time frames, which in a way is counterintuitive since, by definition, when I was younger I had more time ahead of me than I do now.

(I find it a little strange and a lot narcissistic, and you may agree, that I’m well into this post without having once mentioned the actual expectant parents, my daughter and son-in-law. Having checked that box, I can now move on.)

When you become a grandparent, you change generations. On the genealogical tree, you move up. I could view this as a promotion or, seen differently, as getting kicked upstairs, like a superannuated executive given an honorific title and little responsibility. While neither extreme is accurate, I expect there will be a natural shift in the center of gravity of the family dynamic. The married couple becomes transformed into a young family and with that change their gravitational pull will increase markedly among the rest of the family.

That’s probably exactly as it should be.

I do feel some primordial, evolutionary, and surprisingly intense anticipatory satisfaction in seeing a portion of my genes being carried forward with the promise of some small part of me becoming immortal. Not just genetic code, of course, but knowing that perhaps my greatest influence as a grandparent will be the ongoing transmission of the traits I gave my daughter when my wife and I were raising her, even if inevitably those traits are a mix of help and hinderance.

(Parenting triumphs seem to take the unmemorable form of avoiding mistakes, while my parenting miscues seem to “echo on in eternity.”) ²

I am due to be one of four grandparents (and there are three expectant great grandparents as well.) The four grandparents-to-be are already extremely fond of and close with each other. Which is lucky as I know it doesn’t always work out that way. We already have a natural and intense common “rooting interest” in our children’s marriage and happiness. I imagine the bond among the four of us will grow even stronger when we share and root for a grandchild.

Of course our daughter and their son will behave as if they are the first people to have a baby and, notwithstanding having both sets of their parents close by and willing, able, (and desperate?) to help, they will also believe they have absolutely no need for our advice.  (I distinctly remember feeling exactly this way!). And these twin and somewhat contradictory attitudes will be absolutely fitting and proper.

At this point of expectancy, before I become captured and subsumed by the “cult,” I am most looking forward to being able to observe my daughter and son-in-law (both beloved) as parents and observing as well how a grandchild will be a mix of both natural and nurturing influences.

As to the hypothetical question I began this post with, whether it is more desirable to meet one’s ancestor or distant descendant, my answer has changed.

I used to think I’d rather meet my ancestor, because it was lower risk. If I was unimpressed or disappointed with my ancestor, it would change nothing. It might even make me think how well our family had evolved from unpromising origins. In contrast, I thought that if I met a distant descendant, the stakes would be higher. If I was disappointed, that could be depressing.

Now, my mindset and my answer have flipped. I choose distant descendant. I can’t imagine being anything but thrilled. Perhaps surreptitiously the grandparent cult has already wrapped its loving and permanent embrace around me. And if true, so be it!

1. Sad experience has shown that my enthusiasm for the ancestor/descendant question is not often shared. In fact, when I have asked the question of others, it has had a chilling, if not freezing, effect on the conversational flow, calling to mind the clever definition of a committee as “a cul de sac down which ideas are lured and quietly strangled.”

2. As a parenting miscue example, my playing an elaborate practical joke on our twelve year old daughter involving adjacent hotel rooms, her babysitting her younger brothers in the children’s room, my posing as a prowler in our adjacent room’s bathroom and calling my daughter on my cell phone and asking her to investigate the bathroom where I had hidden myself, waiting to scare her.