Scattered Pictures #4: Apology to My Kids
Besotted grandparent Jim Sollisch considers the difference between fatherly and grandfatherly love.
When you run into someone who’s just fallen in love, look out. They’ve got pictures. They’ve got videos. And they twist, turn and mutilate every subject until it yields yet another story about their person. They will sing the praises of their beloved’s smallest gestures and traits. It’s insufferable. . . talking to a grandparent.
I’m a grandparent. And I have been known to blubber and blabber epithets of affection and stare in wonder at the most mundane things my grandkids do. I say things like this to all five of them: “If you were any cuter, elephants would start talking and the sun would stay out all night.”
Then I look up from my fawning, and there is my child, their parent. And I am confronted by an unwelcome thought: Did I ever love you this much?
I must have, right? I was just busy making sure you didn’t fall off the bookcase and split your head open, which you did, of course. I was just trying to keep you alive. And figure out how to make a living. And finish growing up myself.
But, there must have been these moments, where I stared at you dumbly, my brain stopped, my eyes full, marveling at your impossible cuteness, at the miracle of your dimple or the way you say a word, like I do every time I am with your children.
If I’m being honest, though, I can’t remember.
What I do know is that this love I feel can’t be explained away by all the common wisdom: that grandparental love is special because we get to give them back at the end of a visit. Or that we get all the fun and none of the responsibility. While that’s true (at least for grandparents who aren’t raising their grandkids), it doesn’t account for this thing I feel: this physical rush, this sensation of falling. I’ve felt this before. This is new love.
And new love doesn’t look back. Its job isn’t to care about first love, which is what you and I had when you came into the world 30 years ago. I loved you more than I ever thought I could love a person—until you brought me these kids.
And there’s one more thing at play here: My capacity for love is larger now. Loss will do that. So will time. When there is less future, the present becomes more important. And that’s where love thrives.
I understand love better now, too. I finally get what Shakespeare meant when he wrote in Sonnet 116, “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”
When you were little, I thought of love only as a verb. Now I recognize it as a state of being. And I know that it’s just bluster to measure love against the height of mountains or the width of rivers as we do in songs. Love is often smaller and quieter than I once expected. Its presence shadows you. And in between breaths, you can hear it hum.
Jim Sollisch’s essays have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and for several years he was a commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition. He is the author of a new book of short essays, How donating a kidney fixed my jump shot.
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Nice thoughts. I like the photos. You look content. Even wise. I am in my 80s now. 6 grown grandchildren. A lot of texting now. We end each text as follows: ILYTTMAB. I leave it to your devices to figure out what it means.
So lovely and congratulations! I don't have grandchildren yet... but my kid tells me that their plan for the future involves creating a communal home where we live in the same house with her friends and a baby. My job will be making soup and spoiling grandchild. My partner and I love this plan. I have seen it in action in other countries where oldsters are valued for their experience. My kid tells me that their friend group remembers how our house was welcoming when they were all rowdy teenagers--we decided to be the so-called “safe house,” where friends could come over and receive some love. We hope to continue this tradition into the future. Your story is inspiring.