In Nana’s Garden

When I was growing up in New York City and Toronto, grandmothers were a concept, not a reality. One of my grandmothers was a California socialite with bright red hair, a cigarette smoking vixen who went to jazz clubs, martini lunches, and vied for male attention. The other was a British/Canadian writer and editor, a feminist who lived with Doris Lessing in London, and vied for publisher’s attention. Neither were a part of my life. I didn’t expect them to be.

The picture books of my childhood showed smiling grandmothers in the country, with little personality and never-changing, generous spirits. They were not a cliché to me, because I had never seen one that looked like that. They were an exotic fiction. I remember thinking that it might be nice to have one.

The grandmothers in those books seemed to spring into their role, as though they were always there, grandmothers-in-waiting, without past lives.

I have had a life, and continue to have one that is busy and fulfilling. I’m a writer, and I work in theatre and as a calligraphic artist. I teach and travel and continue to hone my craft. I have never been a grandmother-in-waiting.

But suddenly, I find myself with grandchildren, and rather surprisingly to me, I am leaning into that world. In fact, I am in severe danger of becoming a storybook cliché. I’m the grandmother in the country offering freshly baked muffins and refreshing homemade watermelon popsicles. The one who has a garden full of cucumbers and beans to pick. Who can sit for hours with you watching birds at the bird feeder. (“That’s a Hummingbird. That one is called a Rose Breasted Grosbeak.”) The grandmother who always has a hip to carry you on and a lap for you to sit in.

If I wrote a children’s book with me as a grandmother character, it would be rejected. We want our picture books to have interesting grandmothers like the ones I had. Glamorous, career focussed, independent, with multiple husbands and lovers. Unique, inspiring, and, to a certain degree, role models. Not the ones who pull themselves out of bed at 6:00 in the morning, dishevelled in a fuzzy, stained robe, to be there at the start of an early toddler day. Not the ones that sneak you a home baked cookie when no one else is looking, before taking you off to get covered in mud.

I’m discovering that my “inner grandmother” is antithetical to my own experiences of grandmothers. Not right or wrong, only different. Grandmothers can be a diverse lot.

Recently, I was worrying about a problem I am having with my writing. The grandchildren were coming for the weekend, and I was frustrated, knowing I couldn’t solve it before they came, nor, certainly, while they were here. A friend said to me, “They are not going to remember you because of the books you write. They are going to remember you because you are a yummy grandma.”

A yummy grandma. It’s a new concept for me. My grandchildren come to the country to learn the names of flowers and trees, to dig into the soil and plant seeds, to ramble in the woods and discover treasures. They need me to be yummy, not exotic.

Although “In Nana’s Garden” won’t be a picture book I’ll write any time soon, from my perspective it is the opposite of a cliché. It is the most real I can be, for the people who matter most.