Reflections on turning 4

Yesterday was my grandson Isaiah’s birthday. He is now the grand age of four years old! As I was lying in bed tonight I wondered how I felt when I was his age. How did I view my parents and grandparents and how must he be viewing me? So let me reflect a little…

Me Turning Four

I was the oldest of my siblings. The year I turned four my father and mother were 32 and 28 respectively. Because my father’s parents had divorced and remarried I had three sets of grandparents. Their ages were 58/67 (Russell), 87/57 (Rogers), and 54/54 (Pierpont). So Grandpa Russell and Grampy Pierpont were still working, but Bampa Rogers was long since retired. However, this did not have any impact on my relationship with them since I generally only saw them on weekends and holidays. I never saw Grandpa Russell go off to work (he was a security guard with Pinkerton), and I only recall visiting Grampy Pierpont at his job once in my lifetime (he was a clerk at a plumbing supply company in those years).

My parents only had one car in those years, so if my mother wanted to go grocery shopping I and my sister had to ride along with them to Waterbury in the morning to drop my father off outside the gates of Scovill and then pick him up again at the end of his work day. He worked for the same company for 40 years, so I always viewed him in that context. But my mother’s job was to care for the children. So to summarize my “view” of these significant adults in my life:

Parents – father works, mother is always around to take care of us

Grandpa and Nana Russell – someone to visit on occasion, work is irrelevant, certainly not any one you would “play” with, the adults visit with them and the children were expected to stay quiet

Grampy and Grammy Pierpont – someone to visit regularly, work is mostly irrelevant although I knew about it, they loved interacting with their many grandchildren

Bampa and Grandma Rogers – Bampa is “old”, Grandma is also “old” (it was about this time that she began undergoing dementia and was confined to a nursing home), interactions are few

My Son Turning Four

Because my wife and I waited several years until we had some financial stability and owned our own home, we were a little bit older when we had children. Our son turned four the year that I turned 35 and my wife 36. So our parents (my son’s grandparents) were also a bit older than mine had been. My parents were 63 and 59 and my wife’s parents were 60 and 57 that year.

We lived in PA, my parents were in CT and my wife’s parents in MI. So interactions were limited to occasional visits. However it wasn’t too many years later that we began a practice of having our children stay for a week or two with my parents each summer. But visits to Michigan were only once a year. So how might my son have viewed all of us?

Parents – father works, mother is the primary childcare provider (that was the year that my wife began working full-time as a preschool teacher, but she took our children to school with her, so whenever they were not in school neither was she).

Grampy and Grammy Russell – someone to visit, interested in their lives, willing to spend time with them during their summer extended visits

Grandpa and Grandma VanDeCar – someone a long way away, not someone who ever played with them

Isaiah Turning Four

My daughter and son-in-law are the same ages that my wife and I were when our children were born. But because that makes two generations in a row that waited before having children, my wife and I are older than either our parents or grandparents were at a similar stage in life. Since I decided to retire at age 58, Isaiah has never known me when I was working. And my wife also stopped teaching before he was born. His other grandparents are a similar age, but they both just stopped working in the last few years.

Isaiah is very aware of where it was that I worked. When we drive by it, he is quick to point and say, “Grandpa, Air Products!” but he does not really associate me with going there regularly. And he does not do that with the other adults in his life. Also, since my daughter is the primary breadwinner in their family, he has a different view of his mother than I or my children did. However, he misses her and quite often asks, “When is Mommy coming home?” and “Will Mommy be home tomorrow?” Finally, since my wife and I are the primary caregivers to Isaiah and his brothers, they have a very different relationship to us than the prior generations. So, how do I think that he might view us?

Parents – people who leave him every day, people who are so often working, people who you are always waiting for them to come home

Grandpa and Grandma Russell – people you play with, people who take care of you, the ones who feed you breakfast and lunch every day, the ones who are always there for you

Pop-pop and Nana Christman – people whom you visit, but not ones where you ever stay (and that’s totally understandable when you think of having four boys over for an evening!)

Conclusions

When I was four I had no concept of how old my grandparents were. They didn’t live very far away, but they were still only people that you visited. They loved their grandchildren, but they never played with them. They interacted with the other adults in my life and would sometimes watch over us, but that was about all. (The exception was that Grampy Pierpont would take me and my cousin hiking/camping with him when we were a bit older.)

In contrast, Isaiah, and his older brother, are very aware of how old I am (and they have no problem with telling others either!). And we are very involved in their lives. Last week I had to discard a pair of jeans because I’d worn out the knees by so often being down on the floor crawling around and picking up toys. My wife and I are the ones whom our grandchildren turn to during the day whenever they need a cuddle or some toy fixed.

Turning four was a big deal. We all went out to Friendly’s for dinner together last night. Isaiah quickly ripped the wrapping paper off his birthday presents when we got home and can’t wait to play with his new toys today.

Will he remember any of this when he is a grandparent? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. But as I look back and try to remember what I felt like at his age, I have very different types of memories than he is having now. And there is nothing wrong with that. I’m just happy that I am still here to be a part of his memories too.