I'm Not Adjusting Well

Transformation is change. And not all change is as good as we wish for.

William Wordsworth wrote, “The child is the father to the man,” implying that our childhood is what tends to mold and shape our future life, including how raise our own children. I felt this to be true with my own upbringing. I grew up with my live-in Italian grandmother who took care of me until I was eight or nine years old. I understood she looked out for me, cared for me, but it didn’t always show. It was an old army blanket - scratchy at times but still warm. It was only a few years later I learned my mother did not fully embrace her own mother for reasons she never divulged. She took care of Nonny because my mother did what a daughter ought to do through filial obligation.

When she lived in our house, my grandmother and I slept in the same room. Her heavy glass perfume bottles on the matching glass tray sparkled under the fan light, the little pink swans beside it. She taught me to count in Spanish and Italian, and that’s how we’d go sleep, alternating numbers until we conked out. The numbers turned into years, and as she grew older, she wanted to live on her own. We found a senior assisted living place for independent seniors, people who could take care of themselves and needed very little assistance. She’d become a child again, away from the watchful eyes of her own parents’ spirits and her only daughter.

How we raise babies has changed over the years, most likely to updated research. My mother dabbed bourbon on our gums to soothe the pain of teething. I used Baby Anbesol or cool teething rings for our sons. Now – it’s nothing. Cribs had slide-down fronts, and we used crib bumpers and bedding with light receiving blankets. Now – all that is dangerous. I was caught by surprise when I told C not to hit the cat; now it’s “we pet the kitty nice.” No negatives. Everything we did is now outdated and wrong. C is kept insulated from outside influences. One day, he will have to navigate the maze of the real world where people can be very indifferent.

It's no surprise there’s no guest room there. Anybody wanting to visit must stay at a B&B or motel. This is by design. In the early 70s, I remember having more than six kids and adults on the floor one time when company came in unexpectedly, and hard snow had started falling. Babies included in the mix. It’s just how you treated family-all the family. They were always welcome.

The relationship between a grandparent and child is a unique carousel, its ups and downs, a different kind of music. Old age brings with it a new joy, a new set of ponies that should easily trot into a bond with the grandchild. My son and his wife came over in January of 2023 and gave my other son a teddy bear wearing a onesie that said, “Let’s taco ‘bout it.” That’s when we found out they were expecting, and we were over the moon. My parents, if they had lived this long, would have been ecstatic; they loved all babies.

We celebrated much at the baby shower. I had been saving items since before they got married a few years earlier; I kept things my mother crocheted for her great-grandchild one day, books I thought he would love, and boxes of other meaningful things. Kept neatly in a hope chest, the baby would never want for anything as memories would be passed from one generation to a distant generation.

I thought we had provided well for our own son as he was growing up: opportunities, direction, guidance, support, freedom-whatever he needed to thrive. They have the absolute right to raise C with unbending rules that differ from the way they were raised, and that’s perfectly fine. Now that my son lives two and a half hours away (to follow his new career), I feel something has started to unravel. The seams of this relationship have begun to fray. The closeness we once had has holes in it now.

Whenever we go over visit, C won’t have anything to do with us. He stays near his parents, and I can’t break through that invisible barrier to reach him. We try all the silly things and crawl on the floor with him, an active toddler now. When we hold him, he cries when he realizes his parents are taking the photos. Who’s holding him? Friends tell me it takes time, but there’s something floating in the background, and I can’t figure it out. A persistent shadow of some kind; an unknowledge.

When I bought the books for his shower, I made sure some of them were duplicates so when they came over to grandma and grandpa’s house, we could read some of the books together, books that would be familiar to him. I purchased books that featured both parents’ occupations and hobbies along with books about grandparents and what we did in our careers. I’ve always provided books for my kids and have never said no to a book. Pages are some of the best teachers.

The duplicates are still here, unopened, untouched. My son hasn’t been back to visit since. I know there was a whirlwind of life changes going on in those months, but we never wavered through storms. Still, the thought that C has never been to our house since he was three months old and in a car seat makes me wonder if I was a good enough mother to my own son that he should never come back home. Why the leap? Did I hover too much as a parent? Was there something we did that scared him away? Is there something he never told us? Or are they embarrassed about us? We don’t have a model home, but it’s functional. The other grandparents have a neat, country aesthetic on a ranch. Is this jealousy of the other grandparents? I’ve tried to dissect this feeling, but it’s like nailing Jello to a tree.

I know they’ve been back to visit her mom and her grandmother; I see it in the shared photo album online. I see the photos of C having fun, playing outside, hanging out with the cats, and being held by others. I see him growing up knowing little about his dad’s family. Whenever we make the trek across the state, we bring things we think they need or want, only to be told no, thank you, including a crocheted blanket from my mother. That rejection stung me. My mother appreciated and adored my son.

I feel lost, adrift beyond the security of family. I dreamed of being that grandma with the shirt “I love my grandchildren” or the bumper sticker that reads “If I’d known grandkids were so much fun, I would have had them first.” As a child and an adult, I spent every holiday at my parents’ house, bringing my boys from when they were babies to toddlers to teens. That was just how we did things. We never thought it would be any different until my parents became too old to host family gatherings. My mother’s passing in 2018 changed everything forever.

A bitterness fractured the family and split us down the middle. My mother had left a note reminding us to stick together, to spend the holidays together, but that was not meant to be; three siblings became two. We traded off holidays, my remaining brother and I, and we tried to keep traditions going as long as we could, extending the family like tethered balloons. Time seeped in, and all our children became adults, with their own far-reaching families and obligations to visit other friends and family during the holidays.

One by one, the balloons slipped away. With our parents gone, my brother and I each had our own families now, and we split on the holidays. We are alone together.

I look at the pristine books and wonder where I went wrong. Should we move to be closer to them? That would put our younger adult son, blind and disabled, in a precarious situation because he is familiar and comfortable with the resources, public transportation, and his college here. There is no easy way to solve this dilemma.

I spotted my parents’ old photo albums up on a shelf and became nostalgic without opening them; the photos are still fresh in my memory. Would my mom and dad be proud of who we all are today? They’d be disappointed by the separation of the family. However, I know for a fact they would’ve fawned over C this entire time, but the Venn diagrams of their lives had a symmetric difference of at least five years.

Frank Zappa said, “It gets harder the more you know. Because the more you find out, the uglier everything seems.” I have a feeling that’s what is going on. My selfish, paranoid thoughts are jumping out of my head and tripping me up, keeping me from moving in the right direction. The melancholia drowns out the sound of happiness, and I wonder how the future will unwind.