Miriam Weinstein, author

Category Archives: grandmothers

Grandmothers Saving Mother Earth

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In 2004, 13 indigenous grandmothers heard the cry of Mother

Earth. She was in agony, they said. She needed them “to help to heal her and all her inhabitants.”

Since then the women, who call themselves The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers,  come together from their homes in North and South America, Africa and Asia. They meet at regular intervals to pray for Mother Earth and to bring attention to what can be done for her.

They have repeatedly petitioned the Pope. They have met with the Dali Lama. They have held a salmon ceremony in Alaska welcoming the return of the native fish. They have organized a seed temple in Mexico, linking the safeguarding of seeds with the birth of children.

“Ours is an alliance of prayer and healing for our Mother Earth, all Her inhabitants, all the children, and for the next seven generations to come.”

Their names are Aama Bombo, Agnes Baker Pilgrim, Beatrice Long Visitor, Bernadette Rebienot, Clara Shinobu Iura, Julieta Casimiro, Margaret Behan, Flordemayo, Maria Alice Campos Freire, Mona Polacca, Rita Long Visitor Holy Dance, Rita Pitka Blumenstein, and Tsering Dolma Gyaltong.

Impressively Bad Grandma Poetry

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I would not be so naïve as to say that grandmothers are the only subjects of bad poetry. I would only point out some of the narrowness and shallowness of the genre. How about this classic opener:
Everything my grandma does
Is something special, made with love.
There is even a subset of poems on the subject of grandmothers’ aprons. Full disclosure here: I had an adored grandmother who actually sewed aprons both plain and fancy, that constituted an important part of her meager retirement income. Decades later, we found that several of the fancier examples had been carefully preserved.
But you don’t see me writing a poem about it, do you?
The poems you do see are breathtaking in their singsong blandness. This one was found (where else) in an online grandma apron poetry section:
When I would visit Grandma, I was always very blessed
By the apron that she wore, and the love that she expressed.
And on for several stanzas.
Clearly, for this genre, grandma equals love and giving and sweets and an old timey sensibility. What could ever be that good again? When are we ever, in real adult life, the recipients of food, devotion, and the warmth coming from the old wood stove? The answer, my friends, is never.
So here is my contribution to the grandma poetry canon:
Now that I am Grandma, I
Set the kids on stools so high.
They mix their snack, I mix my drink,
We dump the dishes in the kitchen sink.

Grandma the Geek

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Don’t you just hate that phrase: it’s so simple, even my grandmother can understand it?

Rachel Levy hated it too; so she started a blog called Grandma Got STEM (which stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, for you liberal arts majors.)

She called for people to write in about important scientists who just happened to be grandmothers, or vice versa.

You would not believe the response! And the photos! And the history! Women wrote in about themselves, their grandmothers, and famous female scientists. Such as:

Maria Goeppert-Mayer, the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, generated a newspaper headline that read, “S.D. Mother Wins Nobel Prize.” She worked as a volunteer because, since her husband was a university professor, she could not get a university job.

Eve Sprunt, a geophysicist, showed up for a job interview wearing her infant son in a front baby pack and announced, “This is the question you are not supposed to ask.” The interviewer invited her whole family for an on-site interview, babysitting provided.

Neuroscientist Marian Diamond studied Einstein’s brain. But when she had arrived as the first female student in the anatomy department at UC Berkeley, years earlier, the first thing she was asked to do was to sew a cover for a large magnifying machine.

Ursula Franklin was a metallurgist who pioneered the field of archeometry, the science of dating archeologically discovered metals and ceramics. Her research about levels of radioactive strontium in baby teeth factored heavily into the U.S decision to ban nuclear tests.

When Franklin had a baby, in 1955, the committee at the research institution where she worked never managed to make a decision about what she could, or could not do. “The unpreparedness, administratively and legally, to recognize that women, when you employ them, have needs, and require an administrative framework that takes that into account was totally absent. So that the task, then, for women like myself who were feminists, was to know that you had to have laws that gave maternity leave; you had to have provisions for flexible work; and the struggle from there on was not for us, but was struggled for all women to have decent working conditions and safe wages.

“And that’s how it starts.”

The Grandmother Food Challenge

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A 20-something Australian journalist decided to spend a week eating the way her grandmother did in 1964: eggs and bacon for breakfast, white bread and baked beans for lunch; and, for dinner, meat, three veg (one always potato) and dessert.

At the end of the week, she was glad it was over. She was also down a kilo (2.2 pounds.)

What she learned: Her grandmother never snacked. She cooked and baked all her own food, ate smaller portions, and smoked.

And what did Grandma find when she spent a week trying sushi, red velvet cake, constant snacking, and mega-portions? “By the end of the week, I’m relieved to have finished,” she reported.
But she did enjoy the red velvet cake, which she added to her baking repertoire.

There really was a Granny Smith

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In case you were worrying that this most popular of apple varieties was named as a marketing stunt, you can relax now. Granny Smith was real. And she was really cool.

Maria Ann (Windsor) Smith, who was born in England in 1799, emigrated to Australia with her husband, Thomas, a farm laborer, and their five children, in 1838. They built a successful farm and orchard, and had another child. They may have been illiterate.

There are several colorful stories about Maria’s discovery of a new apple, a mutation that occurred in a cross between a crab apple and a domestic apple. What is not in dispute is that she was 68 at the time, her husband was an invalid, and she did the work to both cultivate and claim the new variety.

Smith died two years later; so did not get to see the success of her apple. Because it kept well, was slower to turn brown, and was excellent for cooking, it quickly gained international popularity. By 1975, 40 percent of Australia’s apple crop was Granny Smiths.

Because the Granny Smith was a mutation, the seeds grow into a more tart apple with less appeal. So most apples are direct descendants of the original Smith tree. Australia celebrates with an annual Granny Smith festival, complete with Festival Queen and fireworks.

Silly old songs

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  There is a certain category of song that somehow slipped my mind all the time that I was a parent, but has bubbled up through my grandmother brain. These are tunes that I learned as a child. At the time, they were laughably out-of-date. Now they are quaint. We are probably talking 1920s and ‘30s. They send the kids into peals of laughter every time.
One of the best is Go On Home; Your Mother’s Calling:

Go on home; your mother’s calling
Your father got stuck in the garbage can.
Go on home; your mother’s calling
They’ve come to collect your old man.

A second verse involves the dad getting stuck in the wash machine (they can’t get the laundry out clean.)
This song invites — no, demands — that everyone add their own ridiculous verse. I notice that my additions involve rhyming, as well as some relation between the place where the father gets stuck and what happens afterwards. For the smaller kids, just thinking up any new verse is giggles enough.
Oddly, this song has become a favorite part of the good night routine. You would think that the kids would want the reassurance of a soft lullaby, with protestations of love, or at least the quiet tone that helps you drift off to sleep. But maybe the funny bone must be tickled one last time before it, too, can settle in to rest.

Is Grandma’s like Las Vegas?

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What does it mean that you can buy a t-shirt, a onesie, a tote bag, a bib; even a house decal that announces, “What happens at Grandma’s stays at Grandma’s?”

OK; beyond the fact that we can now take a phrase and print it on pretty much anything that can hold still. (It will therefore not be stamped on an actual baby’s bottom.)

Call it bonding, call it a little harmless passive aggression toward the new ogres, the parents — the attitude is something like, I have put in my time as a disciplinarian, and now, dammit, grandmas just want to have fuu’uuu’un!

Obviously, this approach does not work with toddlers, who cannot be trusted to keep a secret. It’s most appealing for the primary school set, who can appreciate the thrill of a rule broken, and who are not yet involved with prohibitions concerning things like porn or drugs. The unauthorized dessert, the late bedtime, the movie with the wrong rating: what, after all, is the harm?

This end run around the parents may also be related to the fact that we, the disciplinarians of yore, are likely at a time in our lives when options are more likely to be closing down than opening up. So kicking up our heels can feel great. Our grandkids become our partners in family-friendly vice. Just a little bit like Vegas, baby.

Grown-up Grandkids: the Secret Sauce

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In case you thought that grandparenting was about posing for photos with adorable toddlers, that is just the beginning. The really good news is that, if you live long enough, and stay reasonably close, those young charmers can grow up to be an actual help to you, and vice versa.

A new study from Boston College shows that having a close relationship with our adult grandkids can have a measurable effect — “fewer symptoms of depression for both generations,” according to Assistant Professor of Sociology Sara Moorman.

The grandparents who benefit most are those who are able to both give and receive help. The grandparents who fared worst only received help. That might be because they were in the worst shape, but we all know people who are ailing or are down and out, but are still able to give — advice, companionship; maybe just act as a touchstone for values or ideals (What would Grandma say?)

For the young adults, the rewards can be considerable — love, advice, a sense of continuity; a confirmation of their place in the world.

And let’s not forget, on both sides, fun and adventure. Each generation gets a guided tour to an exotic world.

The Buttoned-Up Lip

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It starts as advice to the mother-of-the-groom: wear beige and keep your mouth shut.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if you have a tendency to spew unsolicited opinions and pronouncements, and if beige is your color. Lesson one: this is not your wedding.
It continues as a grandmotherly truth universally acknowledged: Do not give guidance of any kind. Butt out. Say nothing. Hold your tongue. Lesson two: this is not your baby; not your family.
But could anything so uni-dimensional tell the whole story?
Let’s assume that, after all these years, you have some modicum of self knowledge, an ability to read a situation, modulate your behavior. You might just notice that, although this is not your nuclear family, it is your extended family. And the poor beleaguered new parents (and hopefully they become somewhat less-beleagured as time goes on) are wolfing down mommy blogs, parenting books, and parenting get-togethers both in person and online. They are looking for advice. They are aching to commiserate. They are hungry for ideas, inspiration….on subjects which you know only too well.
If you are a controlling person who does not get along with your children, go back to the part of this column that talks about wearing beige and saying nothing. Stop there. But if you have some distance, if you have some control of your actions, remember that you have the perspective and the memory that is not available to parents who are in the thick of it.
Luckily you are available to them. But only in limited doses. Just because you can open your mouth does not mean that you should not shut it as well.

Enlisting Grandmothers To End Female Genital Mutilation

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There’s a Senegalese proverb: “The grandmother’s heart is the school where one prepares for life.”

But what if westernization has made that heart less available to young people, especially girls?

The standard practice for health and development workers looking to change unproductive traditional behaviors, like female genital mutilation, teenage pregnancy, and forced marriage, is to focus on the younger generation, which distances them from their tribal culture.

But in Senegal, The Grandmother Project has taken the opposite tack. It might seem counter-intuitive to enlist village grandmothers, the people responsible for FMB/C (female genital mutilation and cutting) but this approach has been very successful in a series of programs.

They begin by helping all members of the community to talk together about what has gone right, and then to decide what practices they want to end. When grandmothers understand the long term effects of some traditional practices, it is they who become the agents of real change. They use their storytelling, dancing, and singing to teach their lessons and reclaim their legacy — strong, nurturing communities.

One local teacher put it this way: “Culture for a people is like water for a plant.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EufwaX39d_M