A Name for Grandma
When my son’s first child was born in 2016, I stopped to wonder: what did I want my new grandchild to call me? Would I be Nana, like my great-grandmother. Or Grandma, like my mother.
Unfortunately, both those options were off the table. By the time my first grandchild arrived, both names had been scooped up by other grandparents in the family.
How about a nickname? My mother’s family had them aplenty — Toto, Tinka, Pinky, BoBo.
Nope. If I was to be a grandmother, I wanted the perks and titles that went along with it. So I settled on Grandma B — B for Barbara.
I wanted the dignity of an honorific. And so did my friend Jake, whose story I told back in 2010. Here it is:
A Child is Born — And So Is a Grandpa
By Barbara Falconer Newhall, February 13, 2010
My friend Jake is a man in his prime. He does triathlons, reads good books, knows all the best hiking trails, drinks nice wines, and likes nothing more than a good, scrappy conversation. In other words, Jake has never been anybody’s rickety old grandpa.
Until recently.
A few months ago, Jake’s daughter gave birth to a baby girl. Jake couldn’t be happier about this delightful new creature in his life.
He wasn’t so sure about his new status as a grandfather, however. It would require him to make a decision, a big one.
What would this child call him?
Jake? Jakey? Jay-Jay?
Anything but Grandpa. Grandpa — that’s what they call the old guys. And Jake was not an old guy.
I feel his pain. My own father went by Grandpa. My grandfathers were Grandpa Falconer and Grandpa Dick. My mother is Grandma. Old people all.
What’s more, where I come from, Grandpa is not pronounced Grand Pa. It’s Grampa — folksy and countrified, with a short, nasal, deeply midwestern “a.”
GRAMP-uh.
Likewise, at our house Grandma was never Grand Ma, but Gramma – also with a shot of that nasalized “a.”
Pie and Coffee and Grampa With a Twang
Grampa. Gramma. For me, those names have the ring of my father’s small town, Methodist — Mason County, Michigan — antecedents. No dancing, no drinking, no swearing. Reader’s Digest rather than Portnoy’s Complaint. Pie and percolated coffee rather than crudités and cabernet — or even a Stroh’s.
In my husband’s cosmopolitan, coastal — San Francisco — family, on the other hand, the Newhall elders were known as Scott and Ruth. Jon’s father didn’t care much for small children. At dinnertime, they were always seated as far as possible from the head of the table. Preferably in the next room.
But once those small children became lovely, supple young women and bright, headstrong young men, they were allowed to approach the table for adult-to-adult conversation with their peers, Scott and Ruth.
Would You Call the Queen of England Betsy?
My family frowned upon that kind of familiarity. At our house, parents and grandparents were addressed like royalty. Words like Mother, Father, Dad and Mom were honorifics, terms of respect. We’d no more call my parents Dave or Tinka than we’d call the Queen of England Betsy.
Which takes me back to my friend Jake. His first thought was to have the baby simply call him Jake. Or Jakey. Or Jay-Jay. Something cozy, but age-neutral.
After all, no way was he old enough or fusty enough to be anybody’s Gramps or Grand Daddy. And if he really were old and rickety, he wouldn’t want it pointed out every time somebody called out his name.
Julie Andrews — A Name for Grandma
Julie Andrews once confessed to having seven grandchildren — publicly, on The Daily Show. What’s more, she said, she lets her grandchildren call her that most ageifying of endearments — Granny.
Granny Jules, to be exact.
My sophisticated friends Nancy and Steve — she’s a well known artist, he’s a professor at UC-Berkeley — sent us an invitation to their grandson’s second birthday party recently. They signed it, to my astonishment, Nana Nan and Papa Seeda.
Nana Nan? Papa Seeda?
Granny Jules?
How do these people do it? They must own buckets of self-esteem. How else could sophisticated, in-the-mix people like Julie Andrews and Nancy and Steve risk being thought of as — old?
My friend Jake is a thoughtful guy. As I mentioned earlier, he reads good books, urges his friends toward good conversation, and likes to meet his life challenges head-on — with the aid of a nice cabernet, if need be.
Facing Up to the Generational Facts
But it turned out that Jake, like Nancy and Steve and Granny Jules, was blessed with an abundance of self-esteem after all. (Or was a glass of cabernet involved?) Because somehow my friend Jake finally faced up to the facts.
He may or may not be old, he told himself, but he is a grandfather.
He isn’t this baby’s dad. He’s not her uncle or her big brother. Yes, he loves bicycling, swimming, hiking and scrappy conversation. But he is also this tiny girl’s grandparent.
Grandparents — The Family Royalty
And grandparents have responsibilities. They are the elders of the family. They provide continuity, stability, security, dignity and maybe even some enlightening dinner table conversation.
It was time, Jake decided, to accept his new responsibilities. And his new title. He’d be what this brand-new little person most needed. He’d be Grampa, with a twang.
More thoughts on old and getting older at “The Shame of Aging: The Big Seven-Five Has Finally Arrived.” Also, “My Brand-New White Hair. It’s Real. It’s Scary. But I Kinda Like It.”
My grandmother was “Mimi” which means grandmother in french. I am not sure why that was, I had some French Canadian on my father’s side she was my mother’s mom.
Mimi. That’s a good one. Easy to say.
When I became a grandmother, there were already several “Grandma MacGillises.” I had to think of something else. Did not wish to use my baptismal name because my mother thought that disrespectful toward elders. I loved our Nana and wished to honor her by using her title.
I loved our Nana, too!