Grandma Falconer makes sand castles with Peter and his sister on Lake Michigan. c 1987 B.F. Newhall

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

The Oakland Tribune

Sunday, September 27, 1987

“Move,” said Peter. “I want to get by.”

My mother looked up from her book and gave my 6 1/2-year-old a hard look.

She was sitting on her sofa, in her house, feet up on her coffee table.

Reluctantly, she moved her feet to let Peter by. He squeezed wordlessly past.

Something was wrong, very wrong, with that exchange, said my gut.

But what? The chilly glare my mother threw at my son? The pleases and thank yous he left unsaid?

It isn’t easy to think clearly after a few days under the same roof with one’s mother and father. When I was a young career woman living in New York City, I discovered the three-nights-and-four-days-at-home rule.

That was all I could take of living eyeball to eyeball with my mother. I could be her kid again for four days, max. After that, it was flight – or fight.

I broke my own rule last summer and inflicted myself and my children upon my parents for an unprecedented stay of eight nights and nine days.

It was not until I was safely home under my own roof in the Eastbay, my feet tucked up on my own coffee table, that I could see what had gone wrong during that exchange between my mother and her grandson.

Peter had no respect.

It was more than a mere forgetting of his pleases and thank yous. It was downright presumptuous of him to think his grandmother should interrupt her reading to accommodate him at all. He should have walked quietly, respectfully, around the table the other way.

Had it been another child, a peer, in Peter’s path, squeezing past with a quick “excuse me” would be okay.

But around grandparents, children should show some respect.

Respect. The very word sticks in my craw. Question authority was the motto of my young adulthood. Challenge it.

There was no place for blind respect for one’s elders during the ’60s. We were equals under God and the U.S. Constitution. Every creature – adult, child, rhinoceros or whooping crane – was to be treated with respect.

Children, the clean slates of the future, were held in especially high regard in those days. As innocents, they possessed a unique wisdom lost to their time-sullied elders.

And today, the young child, the person of the future – not his parents and grandparents, the person of the past – continues to command unusual respect, even awe.

This small bundle of nerve endings is a miracle of creation, the child-rearing books coo. It has needs and feelings that deserve our utmost attention.

Little Samantha, but a fetus, can hear in utero. We should play her Beethoven.

She has feelings in utero. We should think nice thoughts about her as we experience morning sickness.

Unless, of course, we are planning to abort this particular fetus, in which case it is better not to think.

Through all of this, a stubborn something deep inside me has persisted, insisting that it is the grandparents, if anyone, who deserve the extra measure of unconditional respect.

Not because our elders have earned it. And not because our elders are in any way better, smarter or kinder than their descendents.

But because they are the elders.

Peter dotes on his grandmother these days -- and she on him. This is Christmas 2007, twenty years later, and I'm pretty sure he excused himself as he squeezed between the coffee table and my mother's knees. c 2007 B.F. Newhall

My mother deserves Peter’s esteem because of the life she has led as a mother and wife. Because of the potatoes peeled, the casseroles baked, the dustballs chased and the corporate VIPs entertained.

Because she holds the office of grandmother. Because she has done her do.

Peter won’t even clean up his room and he thinks he is on a par with my mother, who has cleaned up his bottom?

My friend Claudia sends her two small children to Chinese school every Saturday morning. “I want them to learn about their culture. I want them to learn that respect,” she explained.

“Your parents live in Michigan,” she went on. “So far away. I would never want to be that far away from my mother.”

The Chinese culture, thousands of years old, venerates the people of the past. It is not unique in this.

The elderly are held in high esteem in her native Belize, according to my friend Miriam.

“Old people are the root,” she explains. “If grandparents come to your house, they don’t sleep on the floor. You give them your bed or your hammock.”

Today’s Western culture, with its silicon chips, videocameras and interplanetary probes, venerates what it still to come.

It stands in awe of the future and its citizens – our children – as though our children possessed a hot line to the truth or, as the Chinese ancestors of yore, to Heaven.

The fact is, we and our forebears created the world into which our children are being launched.

We have done our best, sorry as it may be. We have done our do. And for that we deserve some respect.

By gosh.

© 1987 The Oakland Tribune

“When can Peter fly down for a visit?” she wanted to know. “How does a week in July sound?”

A week? A whole week?

I tried to sound grown up.

“Are you sure you want him for an entire week?” I said. “Are you sure you can manage?”

Of course she could manage.

Ruth Newhall. C 1995 B.F. Newhal

My mother-in-law is 77 years old, but she has the stamina of a 6-year-old with a weekend pass to Disneyland.

The fact is, Ruth is probably the only person in the family who can truly manage Peter. I can’t manage Peter. His father can’t manage Peter. Around our house, it is mostly Peter who manages Peter.

Ruth is different. She is like Peter. She is full of energy. She likes to get up early in the morning and get started on things.

I have seen her pruning her two-story palm trees at 6 a.m. Strike that. I have seen her dragging the cut palm fronds across her lawn at 8 a.m. as I come downstairs to breakfast.

And, unlike Peter’s overworked mom and dad, his paternal grandmother likes to play.

She likes checkers. She likes softball. She likes holding Peter’s hand as he glides around her house on roller skates.

Best of all, my mother-in-law likes to get down on the floor with Peter and his superhero toys for a hearty life-and-death struggle between the good guys and the bad guys.

Unlike Peter’s parents – and many of their contemporaries – Peter’s grandmother has nothing against loading up her guns and crossbows and blasting the evil hordes to bits.

No, the question was not whether Ruth and Peter would get along for a week.

The question was, could I get along without Peter?

I said yes. Did I have a choice?

Ruth and her son – my husband – insisted that Peter make the trip from Oakland International to Burbank Airport solo.

Peter and I weren’t so sure.

But again, the grown-ups prevailed.

On the way to the airport, Peter sat in the front seat of my car so we could talk.

“Don’t play near the swimming pool,” I began. “On the plane, don’t talk to strangers. Ruth will meet you when you get off the plane in Burbank. Don’t go with anyone but Ruth. Here is $5. Put it in your pocket.”

“How much money is $5?”

“It’s enough to buy dinner.”

“Will I have to buy dinner?”

“No. It’s just in case.”

“Just in case of what?”

“Just in case Ruth is a little late and you need to buy food.”

“Will Ruth be late?”

“No.”

I should stop this. I should be talking about the fun he is going to have. But I couldn’t stop.

“Peter, do you know your phone number?”

He told me his phone number.

“But do you know your area code?”

“What’s an area code?”

“Yours is 415.” I explained area codes.

“415, 415, 415, 415, 415,” Peter chanted all the way down Hegenberger Road.

Three days later I was to regret this lesson in long distance dialing when the telephone woke me up at 7 a.m.

It was Peter calling from his bedside phone to complain that Patrick, his sleepover friend, was pummeling him with pillows.

Peter, loaded for bear, Halloween. C 1987 B.F. Newhall

Aboard the plane, I buckled Peter in.

“Your ticket is in your backpack,” I said. “Put your toys back in your backpack when you are done playing. Don’t lose your backpack.”

A flight attendant was standing behind me. “They are closing the doors,” she said firmly.

I bent over Peter and pressed his cheek to mine. “I love you,” I whispered. “God bless you. Have fun.”

As I left the plane, I looked around to blow Peter one last kiss. He was chatting with the flight attendant.

I cried all the way to the parking lot.

Back at The Tribune, I wanted to stop by city desk to see if any PSA planes had crashed that afternoon.

I resisted.

Instead, I telephoned Burbank.

“That flight arrived 20 minutes ago,” said the voice at Burbank. “Yes, there was an unescorted minor aboard. They brought him out and gave him to someone.”

“They gave him to someone? You don’t know who?”

The man at Burbank laughed. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

Should I insist on talking to the flight attendant who handed Peter over to “someone?”

No. Everyone would laugh.

Oh, well, at least I knew the plane hadn’t crashed.

Let’s just hope that “someone,” whoever it is, likes to blast bad guys to smithereens at 7 a.m.

© 1987 The Oakland Tribune