'My mother, Your mother, lives across the street...'
The thirty-second one
Growing up, I often imagined what my future family would look like. Even when I told everyone I never wanted kids, deep down I pictured myself with a husband and a couple of little ones running around. And in that vision, my mom was always right there, being the world’s best Grandma.
Maybe it was because I had two amazing grandmothers. My siblings and I were especially close to my dad’s mom, Margaret, or as we called her, Grand-ma-mère. She was deeply involved in our lives from the very beginning. Even after my parents split, she was a constant in our lives. We spent summers with her, and many of my best childhood memories include her.
Sadly, she passed away in 2015. My daughter will never get the chance to meet her, and that thought really stings.
My mom always talked about being a grandmother, even when my siblings and I were just kids ourselves, nowhere near thinking about having children. I remember her saying she wanted her grandma name to be "Mommy Chula" or something equally random and quirky. But when her first granddaughter, my niece Kayden, was born in 2011, she started calling my mom “Go Go,” and somehow, it stuck. Now, all her grandkids call her Go Go, and it fits her perfectly.
Now that I’m a mom, I’ve been thinking about my daughter’s experience with her grandparents.
Between my husband and me, she has three—two grandmothers and one grandfather (since my husband's father passed away last October). But of the three, the only one she truly knows and asks for is my husband’s mom, Julietta. And I love that for her. Julietta is an incredible grandmother, and I’m so grateful she’s in my daughter’s life.
And then there’s my parents.
The hardest part is that we don’t all live in the same state. My mom is in Michigan, my dad in California. My daughter has met them both, but there’s no real relationship or any real recognition. And as she gets older (she’ll be three in May which is so wild!), I’m realizing how much this bothers me. My daughter doesn’t have a bond or any kind of relationship with my mom and that truth has been taking up a surprising amount of space in my mind lately.
When my daughter was born, my mom stayed with us for three weeks to help, and it was incredible. But since then, she’s only seen my daughter maybe three more times. It’s a strange reality to process. I always imagined my kids being as close to my mom as I was to my grandmother. But it hasn’t turned out that way. At least, not yet.
We’re visiting our good friends in Charlotte, and they have a daughter the same age as ours. The husband’s parents actually moved to Charlotte from New York just to be closer to their granddaughter. One night, we visited their home, and I was immediately struck, not just because the house was bomb (because it was), but because they had an entire bedroom set up just for their granddaughter. Toys, a bed, books, even her own bathroom. But beyond the space itself, what really got to me was how they had made her part of their everyday life. It made me tear up.
Our friend told us about all the things his mom does with their daughter, how they play, dance, explore, and spend real quality time together. She even joked that before my daughter came to visit, she was her granddaughter’s favorite person.
Being there made me think about my mom and my daughter’s experience with her. She’s only two, but time is flying and I worry that if things don’t change, a real relationship with my mom might never happen.
Can I just blame it on geography?
When I was growing up, my grandmother lived in Oakland while we were in Los Angeles—about a seven-hour drive or a one-hour flight. But somehow she found a way to be very present. Every summer, she either drove down to see us, or we traveled to see her. Probably even more often than that. She was like a second mom to us.
Now, my mom lives about the same distance away. A flight from New York to Michigan is just about two hours.
So what is it?
What should I be doing to build a stronger bond between my mom and my daughter?
How do I close the gap between them so that it feels like my mom lives right next door?
And is it all up to me?
Sometimes I worry that I'm already falling short. That my daughter won't have what I had, the warmth of a grandmother’s consistent presence, the kind of closeness that feels like love stitched into your every memory. I grieve the bond I had with my grandmother, while quietly aching over the one I hope still has time to blossom between my mom and my daughter. I feel the weight of it. The hope, the guilt, and the question of whether I’m doing enough and if enough will ever feel close.
…and so here I am, typing this from my friend’s very comfortable couch. Invincible is playing in the background, her husband is on the floor tapping away on his laptop, my husband is sneakily eating chocolate chip cookies, and their adorable little dog is casually making her rounds. Upstairs, my daughter is sleeping peacefully, I shift my gaze to the Google Cam every so often just to make sure she hasn’t awakened or tried to sneak out of the room.
It’s funny what fills my mind in these quiet, everyday moments. I can be doing something completely ordinary, like watching TV and eating cookies, while my thoughts drift far away. Wondering about the bond between my daughter and my mom, or trying to figure out this new season of life, or stressing about childcare, or trying to exceed expectations at work, or staying healthy, or staying happy. You know, just those everyday heavy-layered thoughts that hover just beneath the calm of a peaceful evening.
P.S. In just a few days, after this post lands in your inbox, I’ll have officially said goodbye to New York and begun a new chapter of life in a place I never imagined I’d call home. Life really is funny that way. I can’t wait to share more about my big move and the new vision I have for this next chapter. More to come :)
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