Nanaville by Anna Quindlen

Author:Anna Quindlen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2019-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

DID THEY ASK YOU?

I’m not going to go into too much detail here, because most of it reflects badly on me. Let’s just say that two very thoughtful and caring human beings made the decision, after their first sitter went back to China, to handle childcare by sending their son to something they referred to as a preschool. This very much upset the little boy’s grandparents, who felt that their grandson was far too young for such an arrangement. One of the grandparents—let’s say the nana, since the pop was upset but wasn’t going to say a word except to the nana—said something. Well, maybe more than one something. Maybe several things.

At which point her son, who had rarely done so before, pushed back. Hard. He was not rude or mean-spirited, but it was clear he wanted his mother to back off. And so back off she did.

So the next morning the nana—let’s call her, for the sake of argument, me—was out for her morning walk with her friend Susan, whom she considers a source of all sensible insights and who once taught the nana’s sons in elementary school. Susan’s last name is Parent. You can’t make this stuff up. So I recount this entire chain of events, and at the end there is a silence so loud that you can hear the birds singing in the trees. And then Susan says, not at all unkindly, “Did they ask you?”

Have you ever had one of those moments when you hear something that you think you should cross-stitch on a sampler or format in a continuous digital loop across the bottom of your computer screen?

This was one of those moments: Did they ask you for your opinion? Did they want to know what you thought, whether you approved or not? Or did you proffer your unsolicited advice and considered judgment, which, in the case of child and parent, inevitably sounds like Mother Knows Best?

This moment reverberates in my head continuously, and I hope it will do so forever, because it marks a moment when I truly got nana religion. Did they ask you? When our grandson is throwing a fit and his parents are dealing with it. When he has a slight temperature and is cranky. When he wants to go in the pool, doesn’t want to go to the potty, wants a cookie, doesn’t want peas. I have opinions on all of those things to a greater or lesser extent. That boy is crabby. That boy is sick. He needs Motrin. He needs a good talking-to, a good night’s sleep. A veteran of motherhood often talks in declarative sentences. That baby is tired. That baby is hungry. How odd that the addled parents of years past become so certain of so much when they are a generation removed. How odd, and how dangerous, to talk as though your words are on stone tablets. Nana judgment must be employed judiciously, and exercised carefully. Be warned: those who make their opinions sound like the Ten Commandments see their grandchildren only on major holidays and in photographs.

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