When Our Dreams Involve People Who Won't Conform to Them

Why do you think our memories with grandparents are so much more potent and visceral sometimes than our childhood homes?

This morning I remember my paternal grandmother. Of the four of them, she was the one I played with the most. Yes, we played. She introduced me to nail polish, card games, and Days of Our Lives. I can still smell her backyard roses that flourished in Southern California weather. My brother and I ate ice cream after dinner on tv trays while she tried to encourage us to top it off with some fruit for our digestion. Grandma used tooth powder instead of paste that we sprinkled onto the soap indentation of her pink sink.

Grandma and Grandpa lived half a block from a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop. We would walk the neighborhood after dinner and stop there first. Believe it or not, one of my favorite flavors was Black Licorice. I KNOW! The ice cream ringed my outer lips with black by the time we returned to their house.

I remember sneaking Andes Mints out of her candy dish in the formal living room where we never hung out except at Christmas, with their fluffy white tree.

At Grandma and Grandpa’s house, there was a little window you could open in their front door. My grandpa would start his days opening that small window for fresh air while he did his stretches. Their porch had outdoor carpet on its steps, but we always went out the side door. The side door led to concrete steps down to their long driveway, which stretched from the street to their double detached garage with doors that you had to manually open and close. When my grandfather left for work, my brother, grandmother, and I stood on those steps, waving goodbye as he backed down that long driveway. And then we would get ready to go to the mall. All my favorite clothes in elementary school, I’m sure, came from trips to the Santa Anita mall with my grandmother.

Why do so many of us have such strong memories of our times with our grandparents? I wonder if it’s because we spend less time with them than the day in and day outness of life at our homes coupled with much less pressure and confusion. Life with Grandma and Grandpa was simple, and we could easily blend into their routines. How is it that I remember the name and of their gardener that came every Friday? Or where the air conditioning and heating units were located in their house? I don’t know some of these things from my childhood homes (not that we had a gardener. Or did we?). But the memories from my grandparents fly off my fingers.

Grandma and Grandpa’s life together was also complicated. Grandma was Grandpa’s second wife because his first wife died giving birth to my dad. I think my Grandpa probably drank too much. Born in the Midwest, my grandfather came from a long line of pastors and missionaries, and I think my grandmother stirred things up a little with her love of bridge (playing cards are too close to Tarot cards) and wearing red (only for harlots). But that’s what was magical for me about my grandmother. She didn’t take life too seriously. I think we talked about my dad’s birth mother one time in two sentences. But when you’re a child transitioning from imagination to reality around age eight, days of soap operas while Grandma paints your fingernails lets the magic and delight of childhood stretch out. After all, Grandma never mentioned how many Andes Mints were gone from her candy dish whenever I was there.

During my in-between time of children at home and maybe them having children, I sometimes wonder what kind of grandmother I will be. There is split-second pain and horror that one of my children won’t let me see my grandchildren, but how can someone like me think about that without caving in for more than a few seconds? However, if my grandchildren spend the night at my house or help me decorate the Christmas tree someday, what memories will they remember when they’re fifty and thinking about what it might be like with their future grandchildren? What of me will they always have with them?

It took two years for me to touch these shelves, sorting and organizing board games and children’s books. But I finally could. There is a lot of hope for the future including children within these shelves.

I hope they remember the best of my children’s books that I’ve saved and playing in our backyard creek. Maybe they’ll enjoy the backyard trampoline my children loved if their parents let them. I worry daughter-in-laws, or by some miracle, son-in-law won’t think I’m safe enough with their children. It’s a fear that wants to grip me and take away my breath. I made mistakes with my children in dramatic ways, and what if they hold it against me with their children?

But, I like to think once I breathe through the fear that I will have grandchildren who spend lots of time in my husband’s and my home. I imagine them baking and building with my husband and reading and planting flower pots with me. I hope my children and their partners consider us a safe place to leave their children so they can get away together just like my husband and I could do because of both sets of our parents. We won’t be able to walk to Baskin Robbins from our home in the woods, but we can go to the Fourth of July parade or eat fair food on Treat Street someday.

Since experiencing what I call Violent Empty Nest Syndrome (VENS), I know better than to imagine the future a certain way. But this future is also what I started working toward before I even picked the partner I did — building a home and family for generations called to me early, early on. Sickness, even death, and estrangement (notice the order of that list) might mean what I can see in my mind’s eye never comes to pass. I also realize now that I must allow a wide berth for whatever choices my adult children make. They’re not responsible for my dreams, emotions, or memories in the making.

One of the silver linings of my youngest leaving home two years early is I think I have a long time between being a mom and being a grandma. There’s time and space to build a career apart from a homemaker. To fulfill non-family based goals like traveling to Europe to speak at a conference or visit the studio where they film Outlander and meeting Sam and Cait (What? It could happen!). But truth be told, these are dreams that come after long stares at my coaches and therapists who have asked me, “Jenny, what do YOU want?” Being a mother and creating a home began to live in my cells when I was very young, starting with a love for Marion Cunningham and all those teenagers who wanted to hang out at her house.

I’m pretty sure my grandmother had the gray version of this exact hairstyle.

It’s probably time to stop waxing philosophically about how to have dreams that include people we can’t and shouldn’t control. It continues to remain a question to me; however, how to build dreams with others who have different plans and paths.

Why do you think our memories with grandparents are so much more potent and visceral?