Grandma Loses Self in Smotherhood Role

Over lunch she tells me that she has just finished painting the baby’s room and the furniture.

“Now we’re trying to decide on the right color for the carpet. We need something stain-resistant. You know babies.”

The only thing is that the baby is her daughter’s, not hers.

I look at my friend and wonder how she has the energy, with her arthritis and her part-time job, to go to her pregnant daughter’s house and do all this work.

“You don’t understand,” she says, “I’m remodeling the sewing room in our house for the baby. I want them to feel that they can bring him over any time. It’s the least we can do. After all, this is our first grandchild. We’ve already got the crib and the high chair painted blue . . . “

“Do they know the baby is going to be a boy?” I ask.

“No, but we all hope so.”

I stopped eating my cheesecake. “Are you contemplating sitting for the baby when Cindy goes back to work?”

“No, no,” she promises me, “we just want to help out. I’ve already bought a complete layette, and we even bought a savings bond for him.”

It was then I realized that my friend and I would never again talk about books, current events, old times in school, or any of the things we usually talked about at lunches. From now on, we would just be talking about Cindy’s baby.

She goes on to discuss whether Cindy should nurse the baby.

I remind her that that should be Cindy’s decision. But that doesn’t seem to bother her, because she goes right on talking about why she doesn’t approve of the Lamaze childbirth method.

Well, the baby was born two months later, and all is well. I don’t see my friend anymore. We don’t even talk on the phone. And the baby is a girl!

Look, I understand some of this. I was once a first-time grandmother. It is a wonderful experience.

But meanwhile, I’ve lost a friend to grandmotherhood--call it grandmother smotherhood.

I am wondering if, in her exuberance, my friend has diffused her deep love with a sense of ownership, if she has crossed the boundary of rational grandmothering.

At this writing, Cindy has not gone back to work, but my friend divides her days between Cindy’s house and her own house, where she keeps the baby for long hours.

I understand Cindy’s husband is getting a little tired of his mother-in-law coming over in the evening to ask if she can bathe the baby and put her to bed, and he is concerned that the grandmother is spoiling the baby. And now I hear that my friend’s back and knees are worse because of the stairs she’s climbing at her daughter’s house.

A couple of things are happening here.

Cindy, an only child, will never really know what it’s like to have a baby of her own. She may never know what it’s like to have to search for a sitter, or be up all night with a sick baby and then try to take a nap the next day, utterly exhausted. Why? Because mom came over and shouldered the responsibility.

Usually motherhood breeds inner strength and character. Ask any mother.

But Cindy will be a little light in that department because her mother takes over more and more of the tedious (read that character-building ) chores.

Will Cindy eventually resent the parental interference? Moreover, will Cindy ever grow up? And will her mother ever learn to “let go”?

Other friends say that when you ask my friend and her husband over for dinner, she has to check with Cindy first--”they may need me,” she explains.

Oh, I’m not saying Cindy isn’t the luckiest new mother in the world to have such support. But my friend is 69, not old but no spring chicken, either. Her involvement with the baby is slightly out of balance. Sure, it would be different if Cindy was going back to work and her mother kept the baby--today, there are a lot of full-time, on-duty grannies, God bless them all (recent statistics show that more than half of the women having babies go back to work).

I wonder: Is Cindy’s baby the hoped-for second child my friend never had? I think so.

Now it’s six months from the birth of Cindy’s baby and my friend has just called on the telephone. She is devastated. Cindy’s husband is being transferred to another city across the country. I suggest my friend go back to her part-time job right away.

So now we will all step in to help fill the gap--the gap left by a small baby in a grandmother’s life. My heart aches for my friend. Maybe we should have prepared her better.

I find myself telling her that Cindy will be fine in another city--yes, even without her mother. I have to tell her that, it’s the only fair thing to do.

And I hope I am right. Oh yes, I forgot to say that my friend, Cindy’s mother, has a very understanding husband.