Greeting is startling (04/30/07)

"Hi, Grandma!" the boy cheerfully called out. He smiled as he rode past me on the bicycle with his friend perched securely on the handlebars. He sounded like he knew me and was glad to see me.

My first thought was, "He has mistaken me for someone else." It was followed immediately by, "Do I look that old?" I conveniently forgot that anyone older than one's parents automatically qualifies for geezerhood. At least they didn't try to stop and help me across the street.

It was my turn to do the paper route as my husband was conveniently out of town that day. I had been trudging down the street delivering the news to anyone who paid for it and wishing the papers were a little more lightweight. I was also regretting that I left the water bottle at home. Then those two kids gave me something else to think about. I immediately forgot about the weight of the papers (would that be a paperweight?) and wondered what prompted them to call me grandma.

Was it my stooped posture from carrying the papers? Was it my round grandma-type figure? Was it that years of gravity has caused every part of my body to sag including my hair? Was it the lack of bounce in my step or the slowness of my gait? Or were they just being ornery?

Whatever the reason, being called grandma startled me. Part of the problem is that in my mind I am only about 35 years old. Now, considering that the child I gave birth to is going to be 34 this year, well ... let's just say I am a bit older than 35 in reality.

The other problem is that for years and years I have been Mom, Sis or Diana and occasionally I have been called something unprintable. But grandma? Nobody calls me that.

My one-year-old granddaughter refuses to talk on the phone and my quite-a-bit-older step-grandson avoids the whole issue and doesn't call me anything. This is fine with me. They are both perfectly sociable and loving when I go down to Texas to visit and that is all that matters to me.

Being called grandma by strangers made me remember the first time someone called me ma'am. I looked around and immediately thought that they must be referring to someone else. I wasn't old enough to be called ma'am. That title is for other people, not plain ol' me. Gradually the feeling changed and I accepted that honorific as being the proper way to be addressed.

My daughter's mother-in-law, Carm, is always addressed as Ma'am with a capital M. The reasoning is that when her children started having babies she was too young to be called by any variant of the word grandmother and they settled on Ma'am. So when my daughter says they are going to Ma'am's I know exactly what they mean. It avoids the whole awkwardness of wondering what to call the in-laws.

I am sometimes ma'am with a lower case m. As in, "Anything else, ma'am?" Or "No, ma'am we don't carry whatever it is you're looking for." But Grandma? Not just yet. Just as Carm wasn't ready to be called anything but Ma'am I'm not sure I'm prepared for this new title. I was hoping for a year or so of a mangled pronunciation of "grandma" by a small child and even then the sobriquet was to be limited to people I was related to.

I enjoy playing grandma and shopping for baby Emma. I like giving advice and talking baby talk to a quiet child on the phone. I especially enjoy reading children's books for my granddaughter. Even so, my image of a grandmother is someone older than I; someone who is far more capable than I believe I am. Someone who isn't me. I'm too frazzled and scatterbrained and way too young to be addressed as Grandma.

All these things were twirling around in my mind as I was on my way home. I thought I was coming to terms with this new phase of my life when what should I see coming at me on the sidewalk. It was those same two boys. This time one called out to the other one, "Look, it's Grandma again!'

Don't they realize it's impolite to remind a woman of her age and did they have to be so happy about it?[[In-content Ad]]