Learning To Be a Virtual Grandmother
I am a grandmother. My grandson is ten months old and his
family lives 20 miles away. I babysit for him twice a week. He babbles single syllables, and I keep up my
end of the conversation. We roll on the floor, play percussion on a muffin tin,
and practice crawling up the stairs. He’s very happy and affectionate. We snuggle
and touch a lot, and he trusts me.
My granddaughter is 28 months old and her family lives in La
Marsa, Tunisia, 5,734 miles away. I see her three or four times a year for a
week or two. We go for walks, play at the playground, read books, and stack
blocks. What we don’t do is snuggle or touch at all. She shies away from
strangers, and I’m still in that category. She babbles incoherently (at least
to me), but she responds correctly to directions in English, French, and Arabic.
She trusts me at arm’s length.
One grandchild is a child of my world--one whom I can access
easily both physically and emotionally.
The other is a child of the wide world--one whom I must
learn to access, perhaps not physically, perhaps not in her every-day language,
but certainly virtually.
It sounds like an uphill battle but when I hear my
granddaughter’s voice calling “Nana” as
I answer a Skype call, my grandmotherly heart swells to the same degree as a hug from my grandson. Her unlikely
yet enthusiastic blend of sounds is music to my ears.
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