Shifting family circles

Hal and I picked up our grandson at 2:00 yesterday morning and drove him to the airport. We hugged him and sent him off to Morocco where he will spend the next two years. We were all a little sad, but I could see both sorrow and excitement dancing in his eyes.

This comes at the end of a two-year exploratory period that’s seemed like a roller coaster ride. Having graduated from the university several years ago with an engineering degree and a desire to serve God and people in some needy place overseas, questions presented themselves. Where? Doing what? With which organization? For how long? The search took him down some interesting trails, all while he was holding jobs in the engineering field that put his salary at a level beyond what we’d ever earned. But he’s not in it for the money.

So now he’s off. I’m happy for him, but I’ll not deny the sense of loss I feel.

And this is not the first time I’ve felt this way.

Twenty-seven years ago, I discovered how important grandchildren were. It was like a new world opening up with these little critters playing an extremely important role. Of course, we were thrilled back when our own kids were born. But we were also terrified, not at all certain how we were supposed to carry out this parenthood thing. So much responsibility. As the years passed, we grew up alongside our kids. We learned by going where we had to go.

But with grandkids, it’s different. We’re already grown-ups (supposedly). And we’re not the ones responsible to bring up these marvelous creatures. We get to love them, play with them, spoil them, and on it goes.

Except when it doesn’t. Life, of course, is more complicated than that and all families are unique.  As Tolstoy famously said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Even relatively happy families have their rough spots (or years). Not everyone gets along with their grown kids and grandkids.

But I’m reflecting on me, my grandkids, and loss.

Hal and I lived abroad when our seven grandkids were small. Four of them lived in Africa! We made a commitment to spend time with the African grandkids at least once every two years, and as often as we could with the three in Oregon. When we were together it often felt that we grandparents were the center of their world. They fought over who got to sit by us, pestered us to read the same books over and over, and gobbled up our attention as if they had been starving. It was exhilarating. And exhausting. We were the exhausted ones. Not them.

All that changed, of course, with the onset of adolescence. We probably never really were the center of the world for them, and we definitely were not when they hit the teen years. Peer relationships took over, as is normal and right. But I’ll admit, I missed all the focused devotion. It actually hurt my feelings when I’d visit and hear, “Hi, Grandma! Bye, Grandma! I’m going to spend the night at my friend’s.” I felt loss, the loss of my “special grandma” role.

Families keep changing. Kids grow up, get married, and allegiances re-form. Nuclear families spit like the atom and some particles get lost in space. At extended family gatherings Hal and I sometimes feel like relatives rather than family.

This for me is one of the scariest paths in this old growth forest called aging. I’ve struggled off and on all my life with the sense of being on the periphery. Now it sometimes feels like I’m losing the connections that tell me who I am and to whom I belong.

Just another opportunity to grow up, I guess. Maturity is a weird goal. When it seems like I’m getting close, something happens (or some grandkid hurts my feelings) and the goal posts stretch off into the distance again. But the Spirit keeps reeling me in, reminding me that Christ is the center, and that I belong to him.

(I realize that I’m switching my metaphor from football to fishing. But—oh, well. At my age, I get to do that.)

About those grown-up grandkids, I’ve noticed something weird and wonderful. The relationships keep changing, but now that we’ve begun to relate as adult to adult, it’s a new level of friendship, a greater sweetness, and a whole lot more fun. I can’t wait until they have babies and I get to do it all over again. Maybe by that time I will finally know what I’m doing.

So—Aren’s off to Morocco. I’m going with him in my prayers. I can’t wait to see what God will do in and through his life. I’m so glad I get to be one of his grandparents.