Since the time she had children, my sister has lived on the east coast, near her in-laws, while our parents lived on the west coast. My mother would joke, kinda, that my sister’s mother-in-law was the “real” grandparent and that she was just the “grand-other.”

Surging with neural superpowers and bursting with love, we’re bound to spark with our co-grandmother. As with my mother, these sparks may just flash within us, but they can sometimes ignite between us. How do we make sure no one gets burned?

She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named

Fraught as it can be, the grandmother-to-grandmother link is so loose I’ve had to patch together “co-grandmother” because English doesn’t even have a name for it. All in-law relations can be trying — we didn’t choose these people who overnight become our “family.” But the co-grandmother tie poses a special challenge:

Each of us wired to superbond with our grandchild, we’re supposed to SHARE?

Part of my aim in shining a floodlight on underappreciated, underestimated, complex, and astonishing grandmother power is to illuminate what can sometimes feel like its darker sides. I want to reassure all grandmothers that these emotions aren’t merely normal but are in fact further proof of our extraordinariness. And they can be not merely managed but expertly channeled toward empowering us further. All we need is a bit of knowledge, self-awareness, and an all-important dose of humor. 

Many situations can spark our sparks. Here we’ll explore the typically most combustible: access to our grandchild.

Access and the BGF v. VDF Showdown

Unless we all live together like in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, one grandmother is going to live closer than the other to the grandchild. This means that one likely gets to spend more time with them than the other.

Try as we might not to keep score, knowing that our co-grandmother can drop by anytime for hugs with our grandchild when we can’t may make our arms ache that much more for our own hugs. Facetime and other technology can go far in maintaining our bond despite distance (subject of a future blog post), but nothing can replace that sweet embrace.

Besides making us miss our grandchild more, that our co-grandmother has more time with them might make us fear they have a closer bond. No one wants to be the grand-other. In fact, deep down most of us (at least at times, if we’re honest with ourselves) want to be our grandchild’s Best Grandma Forever (BGF).

But we might want to be careful what we wish for. If we’re the lots-of-time-together grandmother, we might have another problem entirely. That problem is the flip side of BGF: it’s what I call Visiting Dignitary Forever (VDF).

The very scarcity of our co-grandmother, a.k.a. Visiting Dignitary (a high ranking or even royal person traveling on an important mission), may make our grandchild’s heart grow fonder. (Note that the corollary adage is “familiarity breeds contempt.”) Showing up just occasionally, she’s special (yay!). By contrast, being around all the time, we’re ordinary (yawn). She’s the yearned-for VIP; we’re the ho-hum regular. She’s the “oh, yes!”; we’re the “whatever.” She’s the pâté; we’re the chopped liver. I’ll make myself stop now. Compounding the problem is that visiting dignitaries often come bearing gifts.

I’m fortunate enough to be the local grandmother. I adore my co-grandmothers. And yet. I confess. Just last evening, when my preschool-age granddaughter proudly announced that her visiting grandmother had brought her “so much crafts to make,” I felt a twinge in my chest. I dearly hoped it was my dinner burrito, but a voice in my head quickly dispelled that with an unmistakably nasty, “Oh, did she really?”

My co-grandmother has an advanced degree in art history, worked for years as an appraiser at a famous auction house, and studied Renaissance icon painting with a modern master. Meanwhile, I confuse Monet with Manet and can barely draw a stick figure. Nonetheless, I suddenly felt competitive about all the materials I’d ever brought and the art projects I’d ever done with our granddaughter. Honey, don’t you remember those ok-maybe-slightly-creepy toilet-paper-roll dachshunds we made? Yeah, and remember those ok-maybe-still-slightly-sticky-with-bits-of-yolk, egg-carton caterpillars? So what if all my ideas involve recycled refuse?

As it turned out, my co-grandmother’s craft supplies were beautifully simple: a pad of construction paper, a small box of crayons, and some child-safe scissors. Our granddaughter and I spent hours cutting out and decorating characters for performances we staged in 2D on the kitchen table, scraps fluttering to the floor like rainbow snow. It was an evening of enchantment, thanks to her other grandmother’s lovely gift.

Sparks Can Fuel Us, Not Rule Us

Our spark-mastering methods will be the same whether the situation we’re facing is BGF or VDF. Our sparks will fuel us, not rule us, whether our co-grandmother spends more time with our grandchild than we do or spends less time but gets treated like a visiting dignitary.  In either scenario, we fight our fire not with fire, but with knowledge, self-awareness, and humor.

Knowledge

The knowledge is that our neural superpowers themselves are what make us zealously protective of, and therefore territorial about, our grandchild. Our protectiveness is exalted but can easily slip into competitiveness, making access to our grandchild feel like a turf war where the child is the turf. By understanding that what drives the vying is noble, not petty, we get the perspective we need to surmount those sparks.

Self-Awareness

The self-awareness is readily recognizing our competitive feelings for what they really are. For example, all-too-practiced now, I could quickly see that my resentment toward my “crafty” co-grandmother was a reflexive response to what felt like a threat to my bond with our granddaughter. That bond feels essential to my being able to protect her. But this isn’t a zero-sum game. By spending time with and doing things for our granddaughter, my co-grandmother isn’t diminishing my grandmother/grandchild bond. She’s strengthening her own.

Our grandchildren have an infinite capacity to love and be loved.

How do we see this through the smoke? We ask ourselves this:

Is our co-grandmother harming our grandchild?

The answer for me, as it will be for all of us nearly all the time, has always been laughably no. I’ve seen my co-grandmother in a surge of love tenderly bring to her lips the tip of our granddaughter’s pigtail. We’re all goners.

More grandmother time with either grandmother makes our grandchild’s life only better.

Even if you internally object to some detail, like they let the child watch what you think is too much TV or they let them eat what you think are too many sweets, in the long run we all know that together-with-grandmother time outstrips the extra season of Paw Patrol or sleeve of Peeps.

There can never be too much grandmother love.

Humor

This is simply learning to laugh at ourselves. It’s absurd that I’d flare at the thought of my co-grandmother’s art supplies. At the same time, it’s understandable and noble given my superheroic grandmother brain and protective impulses. So I’m careful not to fault myself. I’m amused, not embarrassed. I’m proud of this proof. There I go being remarkable again! I am a neural superhero, thank you very much!

*****

With a bit of redirection, we can embrace grandmothering in all its loving forms and from all sources. We can steer our sparks to further warm our hearts. Just as we have the power to generate sparks, we have the power to use them as fuel. We can move swiftly and smilingly from gritted teeth to gratitude.

Thank you, sister grandmother, for also adoring this child.