Don't Call Me Grandma!

By Susan Day

Don’t Call Me Grandma! probes the little-known underworld of my life as a grandma - the fearsome challenge against time that makes choking seem delightful. Do people assume you don’t have sex anymore? Has babysitting become the supreme fear in your life, surpassing demonic possession? Were you ever assaulted by a baby biscuit? These are a few fearful situations that I have endured as the result of my agonizing transition from normalcy to the geriatric nightmare of becoming a grandma. Don't Call Me Grandma! also delves into the trauma of getting older. The "golden" years are not golden. The title, Senior Citizen, holds no rank. Wrinkles WILL find you.

Allow me to bring some light-hearted laughter to your busy day through Don’t Call Me Grandma! - a satirical but humorous revelation depicting every hidden aspect of what happened to me when I was hit with the double whammy of getting older and becoming a grandma.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365107474

Susan Day

Susan is an author, canine behaviourist, and a storyteller. She lives with her family and dogs, in particular, Rocky the Border collie and Stella, the blind dog. She spends her time blogging, writing and illustrating; training and counselling dogs and being bossed around by the family cat, Speed Bump Charlie and his sidekick, Furball (see Dogs in Space). Susan travelled around the world twice before she was seven years old. It seemed only fitting that the wonderful events she experienced and the places she visited on these journeys be recorded for history. Thus, her story telling skills began. Firstly, to Rupert Bear, her lifelong companion, and then to a host of imaginary friends and finally to her pet dog once the family finally set down roots in Australia. Susan is passionate about children's literature and wants to inspire children to be better people and encourage them to follow their dreams. She runs workshops for children teaching them how to form the wonders of their imaginations into stories. Susan lives in a small country town where there are more kangaroos than people. She shares her country property with four dogs, three cats, three rescue guinea pigs and a very large fish and her patient husband. More about her adventures are reflected in Clarence the Snake from Dunolly.

Book preview

Don't Call Me Grandma!

Don’t Call Me Grandma!

Susan Day

All rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any way without the author’s permission.

Copyright 2013 by Susan Day (Standard)

ISBN 978-1-365-10747-4

This book is written entirely from the author’s imagination based on personal experiences.  Any resemblance to actual characters, names, places or incidences are merely coincidental.

Transition

There is no other way to put it.  I am a grandma. Some women can slip into this time of life with grace.  They may even appear happy about it. For me it was like being smeared with honey and staked to an ant hill. Maybe a more acceptable description would be like going through menopause - again. Either way, it was not pleasant.

Here is my dilemma. My perspective on grandmas is based on personal experience as the following will show:

Fact:  My grandma had gray hair, spectacles and wore an apron 24/7.

Rebuttal: I have blond hair, contacts and I let food splatter my clothes. 

Fact:  My grandma wore house dresses.

Rebuttal:  I wear cool jeans.

Fact:  My grandma stopped her activities at three in the afternoon to put on a clean house dress and freshen up for my grandpa.

Rebuttal:  I stop for no man.

Fact: My grandma darned socks and sewed buttons back on clothes.

Rebuttal:  I buy new. 

Can you see where I’m going with this? I can’t help my feelings. I just don’t think I fit the mold so being called grandma is perplexing.

I really feel as though the title of Grandma has single-handedly transformed me from every man’s wonton desire to a used up, geriatric non-entity. I am to be stored on the back shelf of life with as much appeal as a can of lima beans. People will assume I wear support hose. They will

offer me old people stuff like the Metamucil they found in their great aunt’s medicine cabinet after she died.  Strangers will want to help me across the street. And, as if that isn’t bad enough, people will take it for granted that I don’t have sex anymore. 

That is really the worst – the sex thing. Once people think that you couldn’t possibly be interested in sex any longer, you become a real nuisance. You are no longer cool, with it or in the know. You are basically null and void, shunned by a society of sex fiends.  Sometimes I want to scream from the rooftops that I still participate in hot, steamy, porn-like sex, but if I did I’m sure I would either get arrested or committed. I don’t think anyone would believe me anyway.

When I became a grandma, it really was an agonizing transition.  The agony peaked when I was branded forever with the G-word, the G-word being Grandma. The problem as I see it is that the G-word shrouds one with a stereotype that is hard to disprove. To me, it’s the same scenario as being named Dick. You spend a lifetime trying to prove you’re not one in theory, but even if you succeed, you are still called one.

The G-word can also be associated with unflattering terms such as senior citizen, old-timer, old fogey, elderly, ripe and over the hill to name a few. I prefer to remain perky, sexy, alluring, captivating, tantalizing and desirable.  But slap me with that G-word and my world instantly changes from The Bold and the Beautiful to The Golden Girls.

During my grandma transition, I had bravely confided my dislike of the G-word to several friends who thought to soothe my aversion by suggesting cute little synonyms like Nana or Grams. I want to be called those names about as much as I want to stick sewing needles in my eyes. I honestly cannot imagine what they were thinking or why they thought those titles were any better. Those people are not my friends any more. 

To add to my confusion, other friends confessed right to my face all their inner-most desires not only to be a grandma, but to be called Grandma. This made me wonder if they had a little cheese slipping off their crackers because I could not fathom an actual desire for such entitlement.  Those people are no longer my friends either. At that point, I had become friendless. I was one against the world.

My husband was of no help. He had no opinion one way or another about being called Grandpa. Why would he?  It’s common knowledge that nature favors older men. A grandpa title won’t change that. When my husband’s hair turns gray, he will be distinguished and will acquire sugar daddy potential. When my hair turns gray, I will be an old lady with gray hair.  My husband will fill in pleasantly and become a hunk, a hunk of burning love. I will fill in and become an overweight old lady with gray hair. He will be sought after.  I will be repelling. It’s just not fair.

There actually was a bit of good news in all this darkness. Maybe good news isn’t exactly right. Relief?  Comfort? Alleviation? Whatever the right word is, it came as a result of my mother-in-law’s own verbal admission. I had spilled my agonizing guts to her over the G-word, and she looked at me with a serious expression on her face.

How do you think I feel? she asked. I will soon be labeled with the GG-word, Great Grandma. 

Those two sentences put a lot in perspective for me.  At least I didn’t have to feel that knife in my back. But then my brief euphoria was forever destroyed when it suddenly dawned on me that if I have to deal with the G-word now, it is inevitable that I may have to deal with the GG-word in time.  So in actuality, her attempt to help ended up being comparable to putting a band aid on a newly severed limb. I seriously had to will my thoughts to something more pleasant like Brad Pitt or open a vein right then and there.

Make no mistake. I am overjoyed having grandkids, and I wouldn’t trade any one of them for their weight in gold.  I just don’t want to be called Grandma. 

So there I was, just me and my vanity, struggling to transition to a whole other being, which is precisely what happens when one is bit by a vampire. I should have known having kids would lead to this one day, but I just wasn’t thinking straight back then.  Being pregnant had ushered a ton of attention my way, and that far outweighed thoughts of any possible, future repercussion, that repercussion being the undesirable, uninviting, unwanted and downright scary title of Grandma. I guess this is my own fault.

The Beginning of the End

Let’s go back to when this whole grandma predicament invaded my space.  My youngest daughter and her husband had come over to give me and my husband the good news of impending birth. We were as happy as pigs in fresh mud.  My personal take was that a part of me was going to live on and eventually make more parts of me and those parts of me would eventually make more parts of me and so on. I would be everlasting. 

It wasn’t until my daughter and her husband left later that night that the mind-altering facts came to fruition.  As the door closed behind them, I distinctly heard, "Good-bye, Grandma."

I felt as though a wrecking ball appeared out of nowhere and clobbered me in the head.  There it was – the disturbing G-word. I had aged a bazillion years in that one instant. I suddenly craved a bottle of Ensure and entertained thoughts of support hose and sensible shoes. Could this be happening to me?

I pulled it together and took a good look at myself in the mirror. I still looked the same, thank goodness. But being referred to as Grandma did some serious damage.  I’m sure my life expectancy shortened with that harsh reckoning. Had I realized that having kids would lead to me being a grandma, I would have considered throwing that reproductive brainstorm into the garbage like a rotten egg.

Anyway, over the next few weeks, I had been trying to adjust to the idea of the G-word and was seriously working

on taking it on the chin, but nothing could have prepared me for what was about to happen next - the sonogram.

My pregnant daughter and her husband had come over waving a piece of paper in the air. Not having lived my life with my head in the sand, I did know what a sonogram was, and that it produced the so-called first picture of one’s baby. But what I saw on that piece of paper didn’t come remotely close to resembling a human baby. I saw a lot of black and gray blobs and nothing more. Okay, I saw a head but it seemed so big in proportion to the other black and gray blobs that it really scared me. 

I was still in a state of fear and confusion when my daughter very proudly announced that the baby was a boy, pointing to what she called a penis on the sonogram. 

Hold the phone. Hold that phone. I admit to having some wild times in my youth, but I never saw a penis look like the black blob she pointed to.  Not even close.

But wait a minute. A boy? That just couldn’t be. Our family has girls. I raised three girls. I, myself, was an only child but have eight out of nine girl cousins. My mother was one of three girls. My daughter just had to be wrong.  The chance of any of my daughters giving birth to a boy baby was about as slim as me ever being thirty again.

I couldn’t take any more and slowly sank down onto the couch, trying to absorb this disturbing news and visual shock.  Suddenly, my TV screen came alive with black and gray blobs, and they were moving. I thought I had lost my mind, but no. It was a sonogram video. What will they think of next?  God help us.

My daughter and her husband pointed excitedly to different blobs that were supposed to be arms and legs and that weird penis blob. But I still could not see a human life form - just a blob that was beating and a balloon head. However, in a painful but short amount of time, I had learned how to recognize all the baby parts that were pointed out to me.  Confidentially speaking, I never really saw arms, legs or a penis but every time I said I didn’t see the baby part, my daughter or son-in-law would rewind a portion of the blob video and replay it, as if seeing it a second time would make a difference. I don’t have to be hit in the head with a case of Depends to understand what was in my best interest.  I suddenly started acknowledging baby parts on cue, and just kept my fingers crossed that I was convincing.

Ten hours into the blob video…oh, wait. It seemed liked ten hours but was actually only ten minutes. Ten minutes into the blob video, I wondered if my eyes would ever uncross. I had to pinch myself to stay awake because the black and gray dancing blobs were hypnotic. I looked to my husband for any sign of recognition on his face, but the blobs got him. He was out, lucky guy.

When the blob dance recital was over and my TV returned to normalcy, I swore to God that I would do good deeds always if he would see to it that I never had