Being a grandparent is spectacular. You finally get to use those amazing ideas you wanted to do with your own kids but were never able to because you kept having to reprimand them for things like making fart noises with their mouths in public or sliding down the aisles of the grocery store on their knees. Because, with grand-parenting, you work in smaller blocks of time, you see. For instance, here’s a 3 hour window. You’ve been asked to watch little Jill and Jack while mom has an appointment. So, you drag out rocks and craft paint and an old shower curtain and have a rock painting session. Sure, they wind up with turquoise tipped highlights and a little sepia brown (ok, a lot) on their T-shirts, but that’s ok. You don’t have to clean them up. They’re leaving soon! If they argue, just let them argue. You won’t have to be their apt audience for long. They’re leaving soon! Let them play Taylor Swift at top volume on the Google Hub. They’re leaving soon! Hype them up with party toast and Sour Patch Kids. You don’t have to control them. They’re leaving soon! You can do anything. Flex your grandma swag muscle. You have earned this right. You lived through the proper care and feeding of their parent, for crying out loud. It’s time to have some fun. Incidentally, party toast is just regular toast with melted chocolate and sprinkles on the top. You’re welcome.
Recently, I was invited to accompany the grands and their mother to that age old rite of passage, the school book fair. It’s come a long way since the days where kiddos brought home those thin, newspapery (made up word that should be a word) pamphlets of available books where they wind up circling every book as something they just had to have you purchase. Nowadays, it’s all done online. But there is typically a brief, after hours event set up for families where you can see and smell and touch all the books. Being a tactile person, this was right up my alley! So, off we went to the book fair: mom, the littles, and me, the grandma.
School libraries are very different these days. At least, this one was. Gone are the double doors that must be propped open with a large metal leg that always needs a good squirt of WD-40 to operate efficiently. My grandkids’ library is open concept - no walls, no barriers. It was sort of like a hallway exploded into a side bulge. We’ll call it a diverticulitis library. Grandparents will laugh at that one. No more are the tall wooden bookshelves that require the use of that round, rolling step stool with the rubber mat on the top. Shelving books is easy peasy lemon squeasy since the shelves are all countertop height. They must’ve bid a fond farewell to the shushing librarian, too, since all this openness has lent itself to tremendous noise. I spent most of our time there lamenting the lack of thought space. Where do the children learn the heavenly art of sitting in a public place and melting into a book? Sadly, not at our public library, since we do not have one. Still, nothing can change a child’s excitement when they get to show off their school, their spaces, their library to the family. “Mom, look there’s my friend from class!” “Didi, look, here’s the graphic novel section!” My 5-year-old grandson immediately gravitated to the area I deemed the “show off” section, the books about sharks, snakes, & dinosaurs with big plastic bubbles on the covers showcasing replicas of teeth and spines. My 8-year-old granddaughter practically steamrolled me right into the horror section. She is a child after my own morbid heart, after all. She’d had her eye on a book about an evil clown that was a grade level above her. A teacher had explained to her that a parent would have to be the one to make such a purchase. I spent the next hour in a haze of grandparent bliss. I grew up in a library. From the age of 6, my mom would drop me off to work at one. Technically, I was a junior, summer volunteer to the librarian who was a family friend, but I enjoyed telling everyone it was my job.
So many things have changed in our world. If my old “employer,” Mrs. Yates, could see me today, she would simultaneously nod her head in agreement as she watched me writing this column. She read and edited my first novel at the age of 8, Seago Nights, after all. She would also bestow me with her patented perplexed-yetnegative look in regard to this digital world where we do all things bereft of typewriter ribbons and cords. It seems to me that we have lost so much for the benefit of convenience. I read an article, recently, citing a statistic where the majority of teens enter high school reading at a 3rd grade level. I am willing to surmise that many of them exit those years reading on a level not much higher. We have digitalized our libraries. The brick and mortar versions require funds that cities, mine at least, feel the need to spend on other things. Sure, we can still go online to check out books, but with social media begging a look-see, it’s unlikely most kids make it to that boring sector. We’ve made the sacred, quiet spaces loud. We’ve made the private spaces glaringly bright & crowded. We walk around in a world that implores us to scream our preferences over others. We’ve erased dignity. We’ve alienated couth. Now we’ve given our children 2 hours at a book fair with their parents. I feel like the indigenous American in the 70s commercial who shed the single tear over seeing all the litter on the ground. It’s a scholastic wasteland. It saddens me. I think party toast would help me feel better.
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.