This weekend is doubly special because we’re having my almost 2-year-old granddaughter’s birthday party, and it’s Mother’s Day.
I was thinking about how different being a mother and a Mimi are.
That falling-in-love feeling with Kennedy when she was born May 16 was immediate, just like it was when I had my two sons: my firstborn, John, who grew up in a blink, as the song says, got married to a great girl and gave me my first grandchild, Kennedy — and my younger son, Scott, who couldn’t be more different from his brother.
What’s hard to imagine before you have children is that your heart just expands and expands and expands. You can love more than you ever thought possible. When you rock them for hours when they’re sick, or somehow feel they’re being threatened, you realize you are capable of doing wonderful, and maybe awful, things to protect these babies.
When the momma robin whacked me in the head the other day as Kennedy and I were looking at the baby birds in the nest for the umpteenth time, I understood. I get it. Don’t mess with Momma’s babies.
My children were funny and sweet, but they got on my last nerve some days. If anyone else messed with them or didn’t treat them fairly, though, it raised my hackles. My sons, just like me, were not perfect, and I did not treat them as if they were.
Now Kennedy, on the other hand … seems to be. This is what grandparents do. They see only the good. We do not have to worry if it’s too early to let them get a cellphone, or go on a sleepover, or what their bedtime should be.
“Momma, Momma, Momma, Momma,” may get on your nerves, but “Mimi, Mimi, Mimi, Mimi,” does not.
We are responsible for spoiling grandchildren. It may not be OK to stand on the counter at home and eat Hershey’s kisses, but at Mimi’s house, it’s expected. I do say no to Kennedy, sometimes. I want her to be a good, caring person.
For making them feel they are the most precious children on Earth. That they have our unconditional love. That we are a safe place for them to run, no matter what they’ve done.
I have more patience with her than I ever had with my boys. That makes me sad sometimes, when I think about how I hurried my boys, or got upset if they made a mess. So what? Big deal. Floors and clothes wash. I just don’t care much anymore.
I loved playing with my boys in the sandbox or reading books to them, but Momma got tired. My husband is a saint, if you’ll recall from every column I’ve written about him, so he was a hands-on dad. I wouldn’t have made it without him.
I remember once when I got frustrated about something to do with my boys and I muttered, “Why do I even bother?”
John, who was then about 5, said, “You’re the momma. You have to bother.”
Exactly. It seems to me that nothing is a bother when it’s your grandchild; it’s a privilege. Every second is precious time with Kennedy.
My husband and I were going to eat, and as we were driving down the road, my daughter-in-law texted that she and Kennedy were going for a walk, if we wanted to come.
“Turn around, turn around,” I told my husband, and he did. We had a nice walk, a little visit and walked home in the dark, a little hungry but happy as could be.
This is the same about being a mother and a Mimi: I couldn’t love my sons or my granddaughter any more, and life would not be nearly as wonderful without them. I’m the lucky one today.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.