We live next door to my paternal grandmother. Literally,
next door. When I look out the kitchen window, I can usually tell where she is.
If the blinds are drawn in her bedroom–she’s still asleep. If the light is on
in the living room, I know she’s perched in her wing chair, cell phone and home
phone and Tivo contol all within reach. Sometimes I see the tuft of white hair
on the screened in porch.

She’s almost 84 years old. She doesn’t drive anymore, and
she walks with a cane. Her body hurts, and she’s dependent upon other people
for many daily tasks. She might need help changing a light bulb or getting the
mail or opening the windows. I even escorted her to the Emergency Room in the
middle of the night one time this summer.

Almost every day, Penny says to me, “I want to go see May
May.” She walks over to her great-grandmother’s house, and they sit together
and talk and read books and snuggle. It gives me time to make a meal with only
one child underfoot, or to sit with William and put together his incredibly intricate
Playmobile truck, or, if William’s asleep, to get some work done.

What’s even more incredible is that my mother’s parents live
½ mile away for the month of August. My grandfather just turned 90. My
grandmother is 88. She’s still spry and takes a regular morning walk and complains
about wrinkles but doesn’t show many other effects of aging. But he’s had a
rough go of it lately, and he’s ended up with a walker and a body that doesn’t
want to comply.

Our children love playing with them just as they love seeing
their May May. We’ve spent recent mornings outside with them, throwing a ball.
(Well, William scrambled around and Penny threw the ball.) When it is time to
go, Penny asks, “May I stay here with Nana Nana and Geeka all by myself?”

I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about these
relationships that strikes me as so special. The cross-generational ties, of
course. Passing along my own relationship with my grandparents to my children. But
what stands out even more is the fact that theirs is a relationship of giving
and receiving, not of obligation. Penny is not required to visit her poor frail
elderly great-grandparents. Rather, she leaps at the chance to see them. They
aren’t forced into babysitting. They love the life and laughter and simplicity
that children bring. There is mutuality, reciprocity, gifts given, from the
four-year old to the ninety-year old and back again. 

So beyond the significance of four generations of family enjoying one another, this strikes me as important because it embodies the most important aspect of human existence. That’s what life is all
about–love, given and received, across the boundaries of age and ability. When
I grow up, I want to be like them.