Simply Grand

By MEGAN RUTHERFORD

There is a magical moment in the latter half of life when adults have a chance to reinvent themselves. They take on new names: Nana, Grandma, Bubbeh, Poppy, Grandpa, Zayde. They cast themselves in new roles: caregiver, mentor, pal, pamperer. They are filled with powerful new emotions that make them feel alive and vital. They become grandparents.

"Every time a child is born, a grandparent is born too," says grandparenting guru and retired child psychiatrist Arthur Kornhaber. The bond between grandchild and grandparent is second only to the attachment between parent and child. Kornhaber calls it "clear love" because it has no strings attached. "There's always some conditional element to parents' love. Grandparents are just glad to have you, and the child can feel that."

That love may be the emotional equivalent of superglue, but it needs points of contact in order to stick. And today, like other family institutions, grandparenthood is being buffeted by the sea changes of the late 20th century. Working against the free exchange of love are high divorce and remarriage rates, job stresses of dual-career parents (and grandparents), a global economy that puts vast distances between family members and a pervasive bias against age spawned by the American obsession with youthfulness.

These impediments, however, are counterbalanced by innovations in travel, telecommunications, social understanding, health and life expectancy. Savvy parents and grandparents are harnessing these to strengthen intergenerational ties. "We have to reinvent ourselves as we go along, but we have more time to get it right," says Lillian Carson, a psychotherapist in Santa Barbara, Calif.

There's an old joke that grandparents and grandchildren are natural allies because they share a common enemy. If parents are the enemy, they must be won over, for they are the gatekeepers who regulate grandparents' access to their grandchildren. According to researchers, the better the relationship between parent and grandparent, the greater the contact and closeness between grandparent and grandchild. "It's up to the parents to make the grandparents feel welcome and to send the message to their children that they're really integral," says Sally Newman, executive director of Generations Together at the University of Pittsburgh. "The parents should encourage frequent visits and not make the grandparents feel intrusive." And spending time together is essential, says Yaffa Schlesinger, who teaches sociology of the family at New York City's Hunter College. "If relationships are to be meaningful, they have to be deep in time. You cannot be friends with someone you met yesterday."

For parents hard-pressed by the multiple demands of careers and child rearing, arranging visits and maintaining communication between grandparents and grandchildren can be an additional chore. Why bother? There are selfish reasons. "Marriages flourish with helpful grandparents. Helping with kids--giving parents and children a break from routines--is one of the greatest gifts grandparents can give," says Kornhaber.

No child can have too much love and attention. But that's not all grandparents have to offer. "Kids learn stuff from older people that they can't get from anybody else," says Newman. "Wisdom, patience, looking at things from many perspectives, tolerance and hope. Older adults have lived through wars, losses, economic deprivations, and they give kids the security of knowing that horrendous things can be survived." For the older generation, the relationship is equally precious. "Having grandchildren is the vindication of everything one has done as a parent. When we see our children passing on our values to another generation, we know we have been successful," says Margy-Ruth Davis, a new grandmother in New York City.

Keeping the gates open need not be expensive or arduous. Kathy Hersh, a Miami writer who is the mother of Katie, 11, and David, 7, sends a weekly packet of their photocopied poems, essays, teachers' notes and report cards to their maternal grandparents in Indiana and their paternal grandmother, a widow, in Arizona. The grandparents respond in kind. Kathy's mother sends homemade jam, cookies, fudge--and lots and lots of books. "It's not the value of the contents," says Kathy. "It's that the children have been thought of." The value of that is beyond measure. "I know my grandmother is always going to love me and think everything I do is wonderful," Katie told her mother recently.

Other grandparents are discovering the miracles of the technological revolution. Margy-Ruth and Perry Davis are heartsick that they cannot be part of their granddaughter's daily life in Toronto. But she is already part of theirs, because the Davises have equipped their daughter with a digital camera, and every day she e-mails them a fresh picture of baby Tiferet. "It's hard for every visit to be a state occasion, and it's hard not to be able to pop over and just look in for half an hour," says Margy-Ruth, "but at least this way I can watch the baby change day by day." Their next project is to hook up the video component of the camera to their daughter's computer and a similar device to their own so they can be in nearly constant mutual contact.

The Davises are not alone in cultivating electronic intimacy. Indeed, anecdotal evidence suggests that keeping in touch with grandchildren may be one of the main computer uses for seniors. Julia Sneden, a retired North Carolina kindergarten teacher, began e-mailing five-year-old Gina, her stepgranddaughter in California, several months before meeting her in person. When they finally set eyes on each other, they were already fast friends. Sneden continues to e-mail Gina, now 10, with tips on how to take care of her newly pierced ears and good websites for learning about upcoming eclipses. "I got to know Gina because I made an effort to know her, and her mother made an effort to give me access to her--and was willing to take dictation when she was younger," says Sneden, who shares Gina's e-mail with her own mother, Gina's step-great-grandmother. For Sneden is part of what might be called the club-sandwich generation: grandparents who divide their attention among their children, grandchildren and parents. According to one study, at least 16% of today's families have four or more living generations.

Jacquie Golden of Salinas, Calif., finds that e-mail has an unexpected advantage over the telephone when communicating with her teenage grandson Timothy Haines, a student at the University of Nebraska. "On the phone, he'll say everything is fine, his life is fine, his mother's fine, his friends are fine. With e-mail he opens up. He tells me how he's really doing, how rotten his last football game was and how school sucks. He gets down."

Many far-flung families have discovered a wonderful Web freebie: create-your-own family sites, where relatives equipped with passwords can post messages, share family anecdotes, keep track of birthdays, scan in snapshots--and see what the rest of their extended family has been up to. Valerie Juleson lives in Wilton, Conn. Her 12 adult children--11 foster kids and one biological child--are spread out all over the U.S. and Europe, and her two grandchildren live in Florida. She keeps up with everyone through a site created on myfamily.com One of the latest sitemakers to come online: superfamily.com

Meera Ananthaswamy has a double challenge in uniting her children and parents: distance and culture. After emigrating with her parents from India to Canada in 1962, she moved with her husband and two daughters to Dallas three years ago. To maintain the closeness they felt when they all lived near one another in Hamilton, Ont., the three generations try to get together at least twice a year. In addition, the two girls spend summers with their grandparents. Between visits, they stay in touch through weekly phone calls. Perumal Rajaram tells his granddaughters stories from Hindu mythology, instructs them in Indian philosophy and takes them to the Hindu temple in Hamilton for traditional prayers. "It gives them history and a sense of where they've come from," says Meera.

But sometimes Suma, 16, and Usha, 13, find their grandparents' sense of tradition onerous. The girls like to wear jeans and shorts, which Rajaram abhors. Then Meera steps in as interpreter. "I tell them, 'Your grandparents' definition of pretty is someone in a sari and not someone in short shorts. You've got to remember where your grandparents come from.'" So far, the disputes have been trivial. But trouble could erupt if the girls decide, say, to marry outside their ethnic group. Rajaram is already steeling himself for the battle--and his likely defeat. "I'll try to talk them out of it first. And if they still go ahead, then I'll say, 'It's O.K. I don't approve, but have a good life.'"

Good communication and that spirit of compromise have helped keep Meera's family close. That's not always the case in modern multicultural America, says sociology professor Schlesinger. The tragic irony is that many immigrants come to the U.S. in search of a better life for their children and grandchildren. But in order to achieve the goal set by their elders, the younger generation must assimilate, and when they do, they become strangers who speak a different language and live by an alien code. "The grandparent has achieved his American Dream," says Schlesinger, "but at a terrible cost." Exacerbating the alienation is the fact that because the Americanized grandchild is more adept at navigating the new world, says Teri Wunderman, a psychologist who works with Hispanic families in Miami, "there's less the idea that Grandma and Grandpa are these older, wiser people."

Even grandparents who have no physical or cultural divides separating them from their grandchildren may yearn for ways to get closer. David Stearman and his wife Bernice are lucky enough to have all six grandkids living within a 25-minute drive of their home in Chevy Chase, Md. Nonetheless, the Stearmans are always looking for ways to enhance their togetherness. So Bernice has made a habit of taking the kids to "M&Ms"--movies and malls. David does something a little more adventurous. For the past 10 summers, he has gone to camp with one--sometimes two--of his grandchildren. "The food is terrible, the beds are bad, there are no televisions or radios, but, man, you just feel good!" Stearman says. The weeklong Grandparent-Grandchild Summer Camp, founded by Arthur Kornhaber, in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, is one of many intergenerational programs launched in recent years. Elderhostel, which organizes learning vacations for seniors, has seen the adult enrollment in its intergenerational programs in the U.S. shoot up, from 251 in 1990 to nearly 3,300 in 1999. Stearman explains the allure: "It's a general immersion into the life of a kid. It's wonderful just to hang out together and see how they function with other kids." Why does he go the extra mile? "Deep down inside you hope this is an experience they'll always remember," says Stearman, "something they can hang on to after you're gone."

Many families create and maintain their own rituals. That's what Beverly Zarin, a retired reading consultant, and her husband Sol have done. For the past 20 years, the Zarins, who live in Connecticut, have vacationed together with their two sons and their sons' families for two weeks every summer in a bungalow colony in Maine. "That's been a tradition, a wonderful way to really get to know one another," she says. In November everyone heads for St. Louis, Mo., for Thanksgiving with the Zarins' son Larry and his family. At Passover the whole clan gathers at Beverly's house. "So we spend a good time together at least three times a year," says Beverly.

Other grandparents try to share the turning points of their own lives with their grandchildren. Forty years ago, Dorris Alcott of Timonium, Md., took her first trip abroad, and her exposure to new people and places forever changed the way she viewed the world. This summer she decided to give her granddaughter Sylviane, 16, the same experience. "I felt having this at her age would be far more memorable than any little bit of money I could leave her--plus I'd have her to myself for three weeks!" Sylviane was moved by the experience of traveling with her grandmother. "I realized it was probably the last time I was ever going to spend that much time with her," she says, "and the first time too." As a result of the trip, Sylviane says, "I have more respect for my grandmother."

Tour operators know a good market when they see one. And grandparents, at more than 60 million strong today and expected to increase to as many as 100 million by 2010, are clearly a cash reserve waiting to be tapped. So, many travel agents now offer intergenerational packages. Helena Koenig's Grandtravel is, well, the grandmother of them all. Long ago, when Koenig was just a parent, she noticed that the most successful outings she had with her kids were the ones in which she allowed each child to invite a friend. Fourteen years ago, after launching a successful travel agency, she used that knowledge and gave it a twist. She began organizing excursions designed for grandparents and grandchildren. This year she's offering trips to 19 destinations, each with four or five departure dates, ranging from a working ranch in South Dakota to a safari in Kenya.

Corporations eager to attract and retain experienced workers have also begun to provide benefits that appeal to grandparents. Lucent Technologies, based in Murray Hill, N.J., offers a variety of family-friendly perks--and grandparents are included in the company's definition of family. Deborah Boyd, who has primary care of her five-year-old grandson Charles, frequently consults company-provided counselors for answers to child-rearing questions. She has also applied for and received two separate grants to enhance his child-care center: $3,000 to buy a classroom computer and $19,000 for new playground equipment. Boyd is delighted. "Not only will it help Charles, but it's going to help all the other children."

Retirement communities too are recognizing the need to welcome not just grandparents but their grandchildren as well. Some, like Marriott's Bedford Court in Silver Spring, Md., schedule holiday celebrations to which grandchildren are invited. Others, realizing how much good the old and the young gain from rubbing elbows, have introduced intergenerational programs for all their residents. Goodwin House in Alexandria, Va., arranges activities that draw unrelated youngsters as well as grandchildren. "The young people stimulate mental health and a cheerful outlook in the elders, and [the young] gain from the mentoring by the seniors," says spokesman Andrew Morgan. To prepare youngsters for the shock of seeing ill or disabled elders when visiting their grandparents, the Jefferson by Marriott in Arlington, Va., supplies a coloring book called Life in a Nursing Home, with pictures of wheelchairs and walkers.

In a world with a shortage of good day care and an abundance of single-parent and two-career households, grandparents willing to care for their grandchildren are highly prized. In the old days, such care was generally rendered by Grandma. Today the social forces that produced the stay-at-home dad have introduced the caregiver granddad. Peter Gross, a retired law professor, picks up grandsons Paul, 3, and Mark, 18 months, every weekday morning at 8:15 and cares for them in his San Francisco home until 6 p.m. "It's a very close, intense relationship that's at the center of my life," says Gross. "What a relief to retire from the hurly-burly of the adult institutions of our world, where b.s. and politics and limitations tend to dominate, and move into this place of love and truth and nurturing and connection."

Gross has a deep, everyday relationship with his grandchildren that many grandparents would move halfway round the world to enjoy. In fact, that's just about what Judith Hendra did. This summer Hendra quit her job as a fund raiser for Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, sold her loft and moved with her husband, a free-lance photographer, and her German shepherd to Los Angeles to be near her 18-month-old granddaughter Julia. "I reckon I have a window of opportunity of about 10 years before she turns into a California preteen, and then it'll be over," jokes Hendra. In the meantime Hendra, who plans to work part-time as a consultant, is looking forward to indulging a modest-sounding ambition: "I'd like to be a person who's taken for granted, who picks Julia up from school and does ordinary things that are actually very important for kids. I don't want to be a special event." Now that's something special.

--With reporting by Jeanne DeQuine/Miami, Maureen Harrington/Denver, Anne Moffett/Washington, Chandrika Narayan/Dallas and Adrianne Navon/New York

With reporting by Jeanne DeQuine/Miami, Maureen Harrington/Denver, Anne Moffett/Washington, Chandrika Narayan/Dallas and Adrianne Navon/New York