The question
A few months ago my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter were visiting. We started talking about my Depression glassware. When I said to my granddaughter, age 9 and in a school for smart children, "The Depression was …" her mother interrupted and said, "Oh, she knows about the Depression, she learned it in school." Granddaughter nodded and said, "I'm smart." I looked at her and said, in a flat tone of voice, "I'm just as smart as you are." She promptly fled into another room followed by her parents and they departed. Since then, I have seen my granddaughter once at her home but she did not speak to me directly and her mother was cool. I think I was annoyed at my daughter-in-law for interrupting me. Being invited to a family event with them is not in the cards at this time. How can I smooth this over?
The answer
Hold on. So just because you said, "I'm just as smart as you are" (in whatever tone of voice) to your granddaughter, your son and daughter-in-law are not inviting you to their house any more?
Unbelievable. I have a number of observations:
First, what a missed opportunity for the kid. I don't know how old you are: at this point I suppose one would have to be at least a nonagenarian to have any direct experience of the Great Depression. But even to be born in the shadow of it, as my parents were, left a profound impact.
Think it's a coincidence the so-called "Greatest Generation" was born right after this cataclysmic failure of the markets? No way! They took one look at the sudden defenestration of broke businessmen, people selling apples in the streets, bread lines, hundreds of thousands living in "Hooverville" shanty towns and said: "I better pull up my socks and give 'er!" (Or whatever the 1930s slang equivalent was.)
And, sure, your granddaughter could learn aspects of it from a book, but you could have shaded it in for her, given a sense of how it felt, provided telling details. (Did she know, for example, that "Depression glassware" was often given away for free?) Her colossal loss, granny baby!
Second, this question of a kid telling her grandmother she's "smart." Precocious, maybe, but I'm a firm believer true brains only come with age. The comedian Louis C.K. puts it well, I think: "Life is an education and if you're older you're smarter … If you're in an argument with someone who's older than you, you should listen. It doesn't mean they're right, it means even if they're wrong, their wrongness is rooted in more information than you have … A 55-year-old garbage man is a million times smarter than a 23-year-old with three PhDs …"
My sentiments exactly. The older I get – well, in my case, let's say the less dumb I get. When I think back on all the arguments I had with my mother as a teenager, so sure I was so right, I moan with shame and wish I'd had more humility about what I knew and what I didn't.
Speaking of humility, both your daughter-in-law and granddaughter should get some. That's my third thing. So she's "smart." Who cares? If she can't learn to be respectful of others – if your son and daughter-in-law won't teach her – if people can't stand her, she'll have a hard time realizing whatever potential she might be exhibiting at age nine.
We do children a terrible disservice by spoiling them. My whole generation is guilty, I often think. And you'd be well within your rights, granny baby, to inform your son and daughter-in-law of that, with plenty of tart/barbed remarks on the side.
But – well, being a grandparent is tough. My sense is there's a lot of lip-biting involved.
For example, I look at my mother, father, mother-in-law, and father-in-law. I'm sure all four of them would dearly love to dish up some tart comments on my "parenting style" – which is really only a "style" in the same sense that the way someone manipulates the pedal and brakes in a car spinning out of control on a patch of ice, headed for a brick wall, is his driving "style."
But, in all but the most egregious circumstances, they don't. In the interests of peace. In the interests of access.
Access to grandchildren, no matter how obnoxious, is paramount to most grandparents, it seems to me. And yours is being threatened. If your son and daughter-in-law are willing to turn their backs on you for something as minor as "I'm just as smart as you are," there are obviously some unstable elements in this equation, and you don't want to create any more friction.
So I'm going to ask you, granny dearest, to swallow your pride, along with your Metamucil (sorry! Ageist joke! Really, just gentle teasing: I respect and revere all my elders), follow your instincts to "smooth things over," and approach your son, olive branch in hand.
Tell him you meant nothing by it, and you'd love to see them all again. He's your son. He'd have to have a heart of stone to turn his back on you after that.
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