Friday night the kids were involved in the performance of a school play. Mr. A worked backstage and E-Grrrl had two small roles. The Drama Club had been working on the production since last October so to see everything come together brought a great sense of accomplishment to the club sponsor, the kids, and their parents.

At the end of the evening, during the acknowledgements, the Drama Club director noted that many grandparents had come all the way from America to be present for the performance. She had the children in the cast come to the front of the stage, call their grandparents out of the audience, introduce them, and give them a small gift.

As child after child came forward and grandparents of various ages walked up to embrace their grandchildren, I was suddenly overcome with emotion. My kids have never had grandparents or any relative attend any of their school events or activities.

The tears caught me off guard and the regret pelting my heart came from many directions. First and foremost is that my children have had so little experience with grandparents. My parents died before my children were born, E’s dad died when the kids were very small, and his mother has been in poor health and lived hundreds of miles away from us for most of their lives. She can’t travel now but even if she was well, would she have come? I'm not sure.

I know if my parents were alive they never would have traveled to see my kids in a play, even if we were back in the U.S. All my life, they were very hands-off with school. In high school, I ran track for four years and was co-captain of the team, but my parents never saw me run a single race or collect a medal. I was in Forensics and competed in various public-speaking contests and meets, but my parents never heard me give a speech until my high school graduation. They never came to school assemblies or award programs or ballgames or any of that.

They were proud of me and quick to celebrate my accomplishments at home, but they never showed up and witnessed them firsthand. I don’t know why. Their parenting roles never extended beyond the four walls of our house. Even as I wished that my kids could have known my parents, I also know my parents would not have reached out to their grandkids the way these grandparents did, and that was such a letdown.

There was another kind of déjà vu bubbling up from my subconscious as well. Just as my children know only one of their grandparents, I knew only one of mine. My maternal grandmother was 80 when I was born. She was Italian, spoke very little English, and had the misfortune of developing diabetes and losing both her legs in her later years. Bedridden but cheerful, she lived with us in our tiny house in New York. She wasn’t a doting grandma because she couldn’t be. Her life was confined by her disability and her limited understanding of English. I never knew her when she was well.

So last Friday when the grandparents were paraded in front of the stage, I felt so many losses converge. I looked up at the suddenly solemn faces of my children and understood their sadness. I pray that some day I will have an opportunity to see their children and be the type of grandmother who shows up at school and cheers them on.

May 7, 2007