Page 26 - Seniors Today - July 2021 Issue

Because grandparents were practically
made to break the rules. There’s a fine
line between loving and spoiling. And I’m
sure we grandparents have crossed that
line more than once. Our love does not
recognize bedtimes or curfews and agrees
dinner can be cookies and aloo chips.
Sleeping with grandparents can be an
adventure - for both generations. Midnight
feasts with chocolates, silly games, making
sheet and pillow ‘fortress” and staying up
late to enjoy all this, is quite the norm for
my grandchildren. For me, the adventure
lies in trying to understand the strange
gravity defying law, that involves various
limbs in my face during the course of the
night, no matter where and how the little
ones are sleeping.

Joys of not-parenting
And we come, bearing lots of presents, treats
(to the despair of parents) and reams of
stories. Although my journeys into storyland
has not been the picture perfect one with me
sitting, holding a book and my grandchildren
around me peacefully listening to enchanting
stories. Instead, the younger ones hurl
themselves at me with hard cardboard books,
each demanding his book be read first; the
older grandson remembers every word of
my made-up stories and interrupts me every
time I get a detail wrong. My granddaughter,
when she was younger, instructed me in
a very firm and no-nonsense way, when I
tried to tell her stories of Krishna, “Nani no
god stories please. I only want to hear stories
about Mamu’s badmashi ka stories, when he
was young.” And after a couple of months of
hearing Mamu’s pranks that he performed

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