Could 100 million women be wrong? Some people in China think so. The dancing grannies typically get together in public parks to practice, exercise and just, dare we say it, have fun.
This puts some others in a snit. They are reluctant to give over public space to these women. Things have gotten so bad that dogs and feces are now part of the equation.
But the dancing grannies are tough — and numerous. They are the fastest-growing segment of the population.
So far, it’s a state-by-state movement, with grandmothers in Seattle, in Kansas City, on Cape Cod. It began as a response to the shootings at Sandy Hook, and has been picking up momentum. Grandmothers have been marching, and meeting with state and congressional representatives to promote a saner and safer approach to guns.
Following the horrific shooting in Florida, the youngsters affected have acted like grown ups. So we nominal grown ups can follow their lead.
Some of us have memories of working on campaigns back when we were the ages of today’s high schoolers — we fought for nuclear disarmament, civil rights, women’s rights. For others, this is the first time that they have marched. Too often, they are active because the violence has marked their own families.
But orange is a good color. It keeps us visible, and links us across age and party lines. Here’s to more marching, and to more results.
When I visited my grandchildren’s school recently for a fundraising fair, members of the poetry club had set up a booth. They offered to write a poem to your specifications, using — typewriters! First, of course, they had to learn how to use the typewriters.
I commissioned a poem using the subject: Grandma comes to visit. A sonnet or a haiku was not necessary, I said. And, just a little bit later, here is what they produced:
Grandma comes to visit
What a delight.
Grandma comes to visit
Only happiness in sight.
There is little to no time left.
And there is excitement in the house.
I can’t wait to see her
In her beautiful blouse.
Want to instantly drop five points in the eyes of your children or their spouses/partners/co-parents? Just use this simple phrase for immediate results.
They may not stop asking you to babysit or attend family functions, but they will do it with gritted teeth. Nothing like a disparaging comparison between the imperfect world of competing demands that parents struggle through every day, and the all-sunshine-all-the-time vision that you remember so well. Oh, and did I mention the wise and immutable rules that governed your life as a young person?
Here are a few corollaries for you to excise if In my day is not your cup of tea. When I was growing up, in my family, when I was young, offer the same easy deification of a dead time.
Maybe you had a good upbringing, maybe not. But it happened at a very specific time, in a very specific environment. Use comparisons sparingly. In my day, we never ever laid it on too thick.
Finding out that your darling baby grandchild is deaf is certainly tough. The parents are most likely in turmoil. You probably are as well, and in addition, your family needs you to be strong, whether or not strong is what you feel.
An Australian organization that helps children with hearing loss had some advice that seemed like it could come in handy in lots of hard situations. You might call it the support stance, with caveats.
A woman identified as Grandma Carol offered this: “We are the support, the shoulder to cry on, the ones to be grumped at when things go bad and understand the reason for it and not get angry. We are the backstop to take the baby and give Mum a break. We are the font of all knowledge, and know nothing at all. We are the ones who give unconditional love to our beautiful grandchildren and walk with pride as we wheel them in the supermarket with the hearing aids and processors, and answer the questions from other children, and well meaning stupid adults.”
The upshot for Grandma Carol: She went back to school, and became a teacher of the deaf. “I have amazed myself…..I am loving every minute of it.”
At least I didn’t show you the really awful photos of babies with
oxygen masks, or the video entitled “Three days after this, he died.”
But you might have heard that whooping cough, or pertussis, is on the rise, and that, as grandmothers, we should be using our brains and sticking out our arms to get our shots updated. That is, if we can remember when the last time was that we were vaccinated.
Although whooping cough seems to come in waves, the number of cases is bigger now than any time since the 1950s, when a vaccine first became available. The CDC says,“Babies who get whooping cough often catch it from family members, including grandparents, who may not even know they have whooping cough,” Also, even if you had whooping cough as a child, “Protection wears off over time.”
The poor little babies are vulnerable until they are old enough to get their own shots. And so we must do what we must do. This is no time for grandstanding or plugging in to your own anxieties. (There are some grandparents who refuse to get vaccinated.)
Smart parents say, “No shot, no kissee kissee.”
It makes eminent sense: kids in orphanages need hugs, attention, consistency, love. People who have been mothers and grandmothers, and who are often retired, have the time and the skills to make enormous differences in the lives of children.
I have found programs that match women to children, some more formal than others, in the U.S., in China, in Eastern Europe, in Africa. They have names like Hugging Grannies and Granny Goodness. One of my favorite names, Gogo Grannies, comes from South Africa, where gogo means granny in Zulu.
In this program, each woman comes five days a week, is matched with two children, and spends two hours a day exclusively with each of her two kids. Children who could not crawl begin to walk. Children who were withdrawn reach out their arms for hugs.
The gogo grannies report that even their “own” grandkids follow the progress of the orphans, and that all of them are happy/sad when the orphans reach the point where they can be adopted and find families of their own.
As parents, we try so hard not to play favorites. Or, if we do, we do our best to hide our little indiscretions. But even when we are being fair, sometimes our kids will still complain that the other person is getting the piece of cake that has the most frosting, or is somehow getting the bigger slice of the pie.
Oh, you thought this would all go away just because your kids were grown up? You hoped that holiday time would be a pure delight, when old hurts flew away on the wings of little doves?
If the holiday is at your house: Who gets the better room? Who chooses the favorite meal? Or, if you are celebrating at the home of your delightful offspring: Whose house are you going to? How long are you staying? And the spooling out of it all, expressed or implied: Which grandchildren do you really love better?
My mother-in-law, at 98, musters her remaining mental capacities to address the sibling rivalry of her gray-haired children. She insists, as if no one had heard this script before, on doling out equal pieces of the (in her case theoretical) pie.
My friend whose children are only showing the first signs of gray has decided to make her own stand this holiday season. After years of bickering among her offspring about how many nights Grandma spends with each one, she has decided that this year, she will just put her feet up on her own footstool and stay happily at home.
This is America, baby! We have parties. We give gifts. We may worry about who is giving what, and who might be offended (diverting attention from the mother-to-be is the most-often heard complaint) but we press on, giving gag presents, outfitting baby’s home-away-from-home, kidding the soon-to-be-grandma about her abilities and her recall.
Classic games include: baby bottle bowling, baby food taste test, dirty diaper. (This last includes chocolates, microwaves, diapers, and guessing. Please, do not ask me for more details.)
One prize that I liked was a basket of spa items. Because someone is going to need it, baby!
Who would have thought that a leisure activity featuring mature women could be so dangerous? All those choreographed moves! All that determination to get some exercise, stay fit, and make new friends! And it is, on the face of it, such a simple occupation; the only things that are needed are a sound system and some open space in a city park.
China fotopress/Getty images
Which is where the problems come in. The activity — choreographed dances performed to blaring music — has rocketed in popularity in Chinese cities, with as many as 100 to 150 million women taking part in what is called plaza dancing. But it seems that sufficient outdoor space is just not available. Reports have come in of angry neighbors unleashing dogs, throwing water, even feces. Residents of one city, Wenzhou, are reported to have spent $42,000 on a sound system used to warn dancers not to make their sound system too loud.
In an effort to maintain civic peace, the General Administration of Sport and the Ministry of Culture are developing 12 model routines that will be taught nationwide. No more variations by city. One of the trainers said that the unified routines mean that they can be performed “in a socially conscious way.” But what if the grannies just want to have fun?
