How I Finally Became The “Fun” Grandma

I used to think being a good grandmother meant being the kind of woman who always had tissues in her purse and never raised her voice. The kind who served tea on actual china and remembered to ask about school projects. I was working toward something dignified, I suppose. Which sounds exhausting now that I say it out loud. Ha!

Then I spent an afternoon watching my neighbor’s grandkids climb all over her like she was playground equipment, and I realized they looked at her the way mine looked at the ice cream truck. With pure, uncomplicated joy.

Mine were more careful around me. Polite. They wiped their hands before hugging me and asked permission for things they shouldn’t have needed permission for. It wasn’t what I’d intended, but it’s what I’d gotten, and that was on me.

The Day I Stopped Caring What I Looked Like on the Floor

My grandson Jake was seven when he asked me to play Uno on the living room rug instead of at the kitchen table. My first thought was about my knees. My second was about how I’d look getting back up. Both reasonable concerns for a woman who’d just turned 68 and makes little noises every time she stands up now.

But I got down there anyway, legs crossed like I was in elementary school, and we played three hands while I tried not to think about the crease I was putting in my good pants. He won all three games and accused me of letting him, which I absolutely was not.

When I finally stood up, my left leg had gone completely to sleep and I had to grab the coffee table to steady myself. Jake thought this was hilarious. So did I, which surprised me.

That’s when I figured out that children don’t need you to be graceful. They need you to be willing.

Why I Let Maya Give Me a Complete Makeover

Maya had been eyeing my lipstick collection for months. Every time she came over, she’d wander into my bedroom and stand in front of my dresser like she was planning a heist. She was five and had very specific opinions about color. Apparently glitter pink was “too serious.”

The day she finally asked if she could “make me beautiful,” I almost redirected her to her dollhouse. Then I looked at her face—hopeful and already slightly worried I’d say no—and heard myself saying yes instead.

She took forty minutes. Applied blue eyeshadow with the precision of someone performing surgery. Used three different lipsticks because she couldn’t decide which shade of pink was “most fancy.” When she handed me the mirror, I looked like I’d been decorated by a very enthusiastic kindergartner.

I wore it to dinner. Frank took one look at me and grinned, which was exactly the right response. Maya spent the entire meal explaining her color choices to anyone who would listen, and honestly, her reasoning wasn’t terrible.

The Power of Saying Yes to Small Things

I realized I’d been saying “maybe later” to things that could easily be “yes right now.” Not the big things—I’m not advocating for chaos—but the small requests that don’t actually matter but somehow I’d been treating like they did.

Yes, you can have another cookie. Yes, we can read one more chapter. Yes, you can help me make dinner even though it’ll take twice as long and create twice the mess.

Children keep track of who says yes. They gravitate toward the people who make things possible instead of complicated. I’d been making things more complicated than they needed to be, mostly out of habit I think. Adults get weirdly rigid about little things sometimes.

The shift was immediate. They started asking me for things they’d been asking their parents for. Not because they were trying to manipulate the system, but because they’d figured out I was more likely to find a way to make something work instead of explaining why it couldn’t.

Getting Ridiculous Changed Everything

There’s a moment when you decide to abandon dignity entirely, and for me it happened while making pancakes shaped like dinosaurs. They looked nothing like dinosaurs. Not even a little bit. They looked like abstract art created by someone having a minor breakdown.

Jake took one look at my brontosaurus—which resembled a deflated balloon more than anything prehistoric—and started laughing so hard he couldn’t speak. So I leaned into it. Made the most ridiculous dinosaur noises while flipping pancakes, roared at the bacon, pretended the orange juice was lava.

Maya joined in immediately. Before I knew it, we were having a full Jurassic breakfast, complete with sound effects and a storyline involving syrup volcanos.

That’s what broke me out of grandmother mode and into person-who-happens-to-be-a-grandmother mode. The difference is bigger than it sounds.

What They’ll Actually Remember

They won’t remember the advice I gave them, assuming I was smart enough to keep most of it to myself. They won’t remember that I kept a clean house or that I worried about their table manners or that I tried to set a good example by always wearing earrings.

They’ll remember that I let them build a fort in my living room that stayed up for three days. They’ll remember the secret handshake Jake and I invented and the song Maya and I made up about her stuffed elephant. They’ll remember that I once chased them around the backyard pretending to be a dinosaur until I had to sit down and catch my breath.

The specific, silly things. That’s what sticks. Funny how children remember the things you almost didnt do because you thought they were too messy or too loud.

I’ve stopped trying to be the kind of grandmother I thought I should be. Turns out the kind I actually am is more fun anyway, and significantly more popular with the under-ten crowd. Frank says I’m louder than I used to be, and he’s probably right.