The writer admits she can’t give up the joy of being the delightfully off-kilter grandma her grandchildren adore. — Freepik
When I'm with my four grandkids all under the age of nine, I fall naturally into scrapes and mischief.
How joyful life can be just rambling aimlessly in the garden or mucking around and sourcing delight in their playfulness - and not get hung up on meals and chores. How driven and ridiculous my former life now appeared to me.
I hereby confess to the wacky, gormless acts I'm guilty of - and a few shenanigans committed without regrets, if I'm honest with myself.
Passwords
I disclose the tablet password denied to them by their Tiger-mum, my eldest daughter. I don't believe in witholding joy or suppressing excitement that they might otherwise have access to watching their favourite cartoons: Silly Crocodile, Mighty Little Bheem, Disney Princess and Naruto.
Creating joy and banishing monotony are all I care as I hear cheers and roars from my small audience of four. The music thrums, the lights sparkle, and I almost erupt into a victory dance as the screen lights up. If push came to shove, I plainly love to let them think that grandma is smart, and feel a flush of thrill.
Homework
Parents strategising their off-springs' academic journey seem to go overboard sometimes. Tuition classes are forced down their throat, and free time is taken up by attending enrichment and enhancement classes.
To relieve my grandkids' burden of homework, I just gave my eldest grandson the answers so that schoolwork could be put away more quickly.
But I've stopped doing that after we were found out by his Tiger-mum and the poor kid got a shelling, while my punishment was to watch him being thrashed. Cringe!
Pinkie promise
It's the kind of moment that feels like being an undercover Secret Service agent for little people. My seven-year-old granddaughter accidentally dropped her mother's mobile phone which was lent to her as a reward for answering all twenty grammar questions correctly.
"Grandma, please don't tell my mum," she pleaded. I nodded. We hooked our pinkies to seal the promise. I knew this was a promise I could keep.
Smuggling candies
Grandmotherhood: this period of a woman's life is the height of familial love. To make us part of their lives, to drown ourselves in chocolate and laughs - and come away refreshed, replenished, and gloriously bonded. To this end, I often smuggle candies to them across the parental border. Shush!
Meal ally
Why do children take eons to eat their food? When the youngest boy couldn't eat fast enough, I lost my patience and just gobbled up his food in one fell swoop. He broke into a huge, face-splitting grin which I translated as, "Thanks!"
I had never thought I had much chop as a grandmother: impatient, distracted by books to read, a serial-napper and a choc chomper. But I never promised to be perfect - or even sober, I guess. I'm reeling from the fact that other grannies knit, bake, cook and hustle their grandkids to study or go to bed. And I don't.
Nutty nana
I read stories, sing songs, draw pictures, play vocabulary games, give quizzes, gifts, hugs and kisses - great to be in cahoots with - a reliable partner in "crimes".
Together, we appreciate and rejoice in the simplest of things. As a grandmother, I learn to see things from a child's lens, and in doing so, the unexpected beauty refreshes my soul and transforms seemingly insignificant moments into wonderment.
Grandmothering gives my old brain the break it needs to stoke ingenuity and lure back sanity. I get to spread my creative wings and swap my siesta for watching Cocomelon on TV with the little one on my lap.
This means that at the end of the day, I'll disintegrate on my bed to audible snaps and crackles, before sweet oblivion comes my way. Bliss!
Perhaps writing down my confessions is my way of conceding that I'm a little wiser now. But that doesn't mean I can't be the off-kilter grandma I've always been. That's just too much fun to give up!
