Grandmothering Across Continents
Grandmothering Across Continents
Are you a Close-By or a Faraway?
There are Close-by grandmothers and Faraway grandmothers. I’m a Faraway. The Close-by’s, like my friend Diane, are there for everything – from birth to birthdays, with tons of babysitting in-between. The Faraways are different. There occasionally, trying to imprint and build a connection in a visit, a gift or a holiday. So we are in Dakar, Senegal for a couple of weeks of sun, son and adorable Zozo. There is a very particular pleasure in this role, which we are just learning to inhabit. Like putting on a new, lighter coat, without any belt or buttons. A slip-on, slip-off sort of physical layer.
The Glamour of Global
When I was young, the international life beckoned glamorous and mostly European. It promised freedom from my Canadian-based parents and cultures, themselves emigrants from Europe, and endlessly varied horizons and perspectives. But the charm quickly fades when your kids do to you what you did to your parents. Namely, change continents. So any dreams of becoming a Close-by fade as my two kids seem forever attracted to two different continents, neither of them mine. Is it, do you think, something I said?
Close-by’s may feel a bit overwhelmed, especially if both parents work and they are relied on for some serious hands-on care. But Faraways feel a bit flimsy, trying desperately to become familiar through a photo, or an oft-repeated name. (We are the Glam-parents, Glam’Ma and Glam’Pa). The former may be overly-solicited by their kids, the latter generally don’t want to overwhelm their own by staying too long or visiting too often. I have read all the research on the Grandmother Hypothesis. The Economist recently rounded up the considerable advantages of Close-by’s for the grandkids in an article called The Age of the Grandparents.
So it’s complicated.
But the relationship to grandchildren isn’t. There is a natural bond. An instinctive recognition of ties that bind. You can almost see the thought bubble float above my 16-month-old granddaugther’s incredulous stare: “Who is that strange woman that my papa is hugging so fondly?”
Faraway Fun
Faraways are nothing but fun. They sail into town and take kids off. For everything from ice cream and playgrounds to swimming pools and merry-go-rounds. They are entertainment-on-tap. While parents reel exhausted from work to dinner to discipline, grandparents appear at daycare to pick you up and take you to play - a different place every day.
And as Sara Lawrence Lightfoot wrote in her wonderful book, Growing Each Other Up – When Our Kids Become Our Teachers, we learn as much from our kids’ wanderings and explorations as they do. With our granddaughter, we learn together, exploring her ‘home’ culture with equally new eyes.
We’ve been to the King Fahd hotel to explore the North shore of Dakar and watch the waves ravage the rather bedraggled humungous hotel built for VIPs who seem not to have gotten the address. Then, because of a bad spike of windy dust and pollution, we went to the Sea Plaza mall to inaugurate the little carousel, explore the pet shop (puppies! Bunnies! Snakes!), and taste the ice cream (she likes ice cream!). When the wind died down and the weather returned to its usual February glorious, we went to Aby’s Garden with its weirdly American plastic castles and spectacular view westward over the Atlantic. Tomorrow, we are flying down to Casamance, the verdant South of the country (under the incomprehensible little strip of The Gambia) for a week by the sea, en famille, but complete with babysitter.
Senegal Grows Like Zozo - Fast & Furious
During our regular visits, now over several years, we watch the gal and the town grow apace. Cross-continental grandparenting is also an education in next-generation exploration and cross-cultural families. Dakar is exploding in growth and building and even CHANEL fashion shows (the first in Africa). The art and fashion scene are excitingly creative. Which is good, because from our trip to the mall, it’s pretty clear that granddaughter has a bit of a shoe fetish. And her mother is always elegantly sporting something eye-poppingly original.
The President, Macky Sall, is coming to the end of his second term and elections were just announced yesterday for next February. He has been good, like so many other leaders around our worrying world, at eliminating, jailing or absorbing any plausible opposition candidate. But the latest, a former tax inspector, Ousmane Sonko, much beloved of the local young, is gaining ground and popularity. Helped in very large measure by the generationally out-of-touch-Macky’s attempts to muscle him out of the running. From accusing him of all variety of the usual sort of sins, to bashing in his car windows (under a thousand witnessing phone cameras), or even turning off the electricity at his rallies, yielding the moving scene of a million mobile phones held aloft, lighting up a defiant youth’s rebellious riposte.
This is the world Zoe will grow up in, so next year’s Senegalese election is invested with new meaning for us. It puts our usual Brexit travails into context. Corrupt as I believe many of UK’s Conservative current bench is, they aren’t getting the cops to publicly yank their competition from their smashed-up cars. Senegal has been a peaceful, relatively stable democratic hub in French West Africa since its independence from France in 1960 – a year before I was born.
I am now 61, born in Quebec from European parents, about the same age as Senegal, the country where my son just celebrated his 30th birthday. He was born in Brussels, where I moved to when I was his age now. Little Zoe is just 1 and was born in Dakar. Is your head spinning? Mine is. Every 30 years another generation moves about and starts the next. And another set of grandparents is born.
We will pass on some lessons I’m sure. But mostly it is the kids who keep us moving and learning. Zoe will help us understand a whole continent emerging. What Zoe is to our family, Africa may be to the world. The next generation, full of youth and dreams and limitless energy. I hope that our fast-ageing world will learn to grandparent across continents. Close-by or Faraway, our global family’s future may be African too.
Adorable ❤️