I had my first child at twenty. My first child had her first child at almost forty. When she was twenty, I hoped she would not make me a grandmother. I felt much too young to identify as grandma. But by the time Lachlan, my grandson, was born, I was more than ready to apply the title to myself. He was a long, scrawny, slightly jaundiced baby. Still, I couldn’t keep my hands off him. He grew quickly into a long pudgy toddler, and finally into a long scrawny teenager. At six foot two inches and some, and 157 pounds — you can do the math. He is handsome and smart, of course. He is kind, over-responsible, and an only child. His parents are extraordinarily good parents to him. They encourage him without pampering him. They support his achievements, while not pressuring him to overachieve. If his mother is a tiny bit overprotective, he is old enough at 17 to push back and claim his wants.
He has come to stay with us, my husband, my daughter Blake and me, almost every summer since he was two years old. We live in northern California. He lives in Madison Wisconsin. I have called him my adored one. My friends make fun of me or look at me as if this is a bit weird, but Lachlan and I have had an extraordinary bond.
I have perhaps always known this, but it was cemented the year my mother died. Lachlan was nine. My family had gathered in Maryland for her funeral and Lachlan came home to California with us afterward. It was the first time he stayed three weeks. Each morning I would strap him into the back seat of my car and drive him to daycamp in Berkeley. During the twenty minutes between our home in Oakland Hills and his daycamp drop off in Berkeley he and I would talk about my mother, his great-grandmother. We would talk about grief and mourning, and family, about what he remembered of my mother and how he felt about her death. It was Lachlan who helped me understand my own complicated feelings about my mother, and Lachlan who helped me begin to heal from my relationship with her and her death.
I always knew, too, that he would grow up, that he would find friends and activities where he lives, that there would be more compelling relationships and activities than three weeks with grandma in the summer. I did not expect to feel envious of his relationship with my own husband and daughter.
Several years ago Blake, who lives within a mile of our home, demanded equal time with her nephew. After two years of my resistance to her demands and her increasing animosity at my resistance, I have tried, this year, to be gracious and generous to her and to Lachlan, who loves her dearly. I’ve also been delighted and surprised to find that my husband, who is not biologically related to Lachlan, has developed a kind of mentoring love for him and a wish to spend more and more time with him as he approaches adulthood.
Lachlan will have been here three weeks this coming weekend when he returns to Madison and his parents. He has been “in school” like many of his contemporaries five hours a day on his computer. He has wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons with one set of friends, and Magic with another set. Zoom has enabled all of these things. He’s been practicing on his rented electric bass guitar. And he has homework. His Auntie Blake has been here every night for dinner. I promised I would not attempt to reduce her access to him and I haven’t.
The love triangle is not between me and Lachlan and my husband and daughter. It is between me and change, between me and his growing up, between me and my own age and stamina. We’ve had no late night talks about his love life (if there is one). I don’t think he is unwilling to talk about anything I’d like to talk about, but since we both go to bed at nine and he starts school at six, there are no late nights. He’s been a wonderful presence when he has been available. He is still the adored one. I’m only feeling the first sadness at change that had to come.
I’m feeling the first loss of a bond that had to loosen, the first recognition of an emerging adult, someone who doesn’t need to process his emotions with me, who still loves to eat strange food with his auntie, and talk business with his step-grandfather, the man he calls Grandpa. Even when we know that our relationships have to change, that we cannot remain the center of another’s attention forever, we can mourn that loss, and I do.
