In an interview a few years back, Shirley Bond spoke beautifully about how becoming a grandparent opened up another side of herself she didn't know had existed, how love for your partner and your children is special but the love for a grandchild just adds another level of richness to the love already in one's life. She called being a grandmother a blessing like no other.
With the same kind of unconditional love in their hearts, a group of local grandmothers has formed to help their counterparts in Africa, many of whom are raising not only their own grandchildren but other kids as well, orphans left behind by the HIV/AIDS tragedy.
As Christine Hinzmann explained in her story in Thursday's Citizen, the Prince George chapter of Grandmothers to Grandmothers has joined an organization formed 10 years ago by the Stephen Lewis Foundation to increase awareness and support for Africa's grandmothers. On Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Prince George Public Library, the local group will host Ida Nambeya, the African consultant for the Stephen Lewis Foundation's Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign, Dan Kintu, a support worker for the grandmothers from Kitovu Mobile in Uganda and Immaculate Nakyanzi, a grandmother from Kitovu Mobile.
Area grandmothers know how fortunate they are and how they can do more to help women like Nakyanzi.
"When I have my five-year-old grandchild come for a visit we have a wonderful time and I love spending time with him and after two hours he goes home and I have a nap," said Maggee Spicer, co-chair of Grandmothers to Grandmothers Prince George. "We were shown a video of grandmothers in Africa and us grandmas in the audience are sitting there thinking 'could we raise our grandchildren and the neighbour's grandchildren and cope with the death of our families?' These women are heroes in their country and we need to support them."
Spicer's comments reveal both the joys and the responsibilities that come with unconditional love for grandchildren. Ideally, grandparenting comes with all of the fun of being around small children with none of the work. There's an old joke about how it's the job of grandparents to feed the grandkids brown sugar sandwiches and chocolate milk for lunch and send them home happy. Grandma and grandpa should get all the good times, the laughs and the adoration that comes with giving kids what they want, when they want it, but parents have to deal with kids on sugar highs who won't eat their vegetables, won't brush their teeth and won't go to bed.
It's all fun and games for grandparents -- it's all grand, if you will -- until they're called upon to be less grand and more parent. Parenting is like real work, both rewarding and frustrating. It's a roller coaster ride of precious moments of pride and happiness with generous sprinkles of fury and regret. For many adults looking back, their best and worst memories of being grownups are usually about their kids -- the successful moments are the highest of the high and the failures and bad decisions are the lowest of the low.
That kind of ride is a young person's game, for people with the energy, the optimism and the ignorance to make it work. They don't know how hard it is and they just ignore the knowing smiles of their own parents when they boast of how much better at parenthood they'll be than their own parents were, that they won't make the same mistakes.
For all of its benefits, active parenting is not an experience many older adults seek to do again, although it seems there are some men, past their prime but in new relationships with women half their age, more than willing to give it a try.
Grandparents raising their own grandchildren almost always happens under duress. Their own children are absent in some way, literally or otherwise, so there is plenty of grief and mixed feelings intertwined in the work of raising a young child.
Better than anyone else can, Grandmothers for Grandmothers understands this and they are stepping up to help their counterparts half a world away, in whatever small way they can to make the job a little more grand and a little less sad.
The group has already done some fundraising and has a golf tournament planned for June 12 at Alder Hills. They deserve all of our support.
