NanaHood

When I found out that my husband and I were going to have our first child 28 years ago, I started keeping a journal. I wrote to my unborn child and dreamed the somewhat naïve and inexperienced dreams of a young mother. I thought for sure the baby was a girl (it was a boy). I thought that labor and delivery were the hard part of parenting (wrong again). I thought I couldn’t possibly love another child as much as I loved the first (definitely not true).

I was wrong about parenting so many times that I couldn’t even list all my misconceptions, but I got one thing right. There is no love like the love of a parent for a child, and while I made more than my share of mistakes, I made them out of ignorance, not because I wasn’t trying.

Now I am into the second phase of the motherhood journey. My granddaughter will be 4 years old this month and I’m doing my best to get this “nanna” thing right. I spoil her, love her, and hand her over to her father when she gets fussy. I make sure I have plenty of corn as well as mac and cheese when she comes to visit. We watch Hannah Montana, Disney movies, and sometimes we sing karaoke into a pink and purple microphone. (I can also sing the SpongeBob SquarePants song if you’d like to hear it).

I learned about being a mom from my mother and about being a nanna from my grandmother. If ever there was a perfect nanna, it was Grandma Layne. My twin boys were recalling just this week how they loved Jell-O when they were little (they called it jelly). Grandma Layne had tiny, little white bowls and she made them their favorite treat every day. She lived just down the hill from us, so I’d watch as my boys ran over the hill to her house to gobble up a bowl of Jell-O.

All Grandma Layne’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren have special memories of her. I hope someday my granddaughter has wonderful memories of the moments we share. I already do.

Being a nanna is a wonderful thing!