"Go To Your Room!"

Several years ago I was the featured speaker at a medical meeting in Washington D.C.  By happy coincidence our son and his family lived in nearby Rockville, Maryland. About fifty doctors attended to hear me speak about the management of acute migraine attacks.  The host introduced me with the usual highlights of my curriculum vitae--- I was professor of Neurology at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, I had published this and that, and so forth; I politely thanked him for his generous remarks, and then, on an impulse, I added, “But Dr. Molinari neglected to mention my most important achievement;” as I paused, I could feel the sudden strong silent tension and actually see everyone in the room stiffen, just before I continued: “In a certain neighborhood only twenty minutes from here, I am known as the best grandpa in the whole wide world!” An explosion of laughter from everyone burst the tension, and I added, “Out in Oklahoma we aim to keep our priorities straight!”

It is impossible to convey the delights of grandparenthood to those who have not yet reached this glorious milestone.  Without becoming foolishly sentimental I try to remain alert to preserving those special, even celestial, moments that sometimes happen when Grandma Sandy and I are with our grandkids.  Recording them in a journal will keep these stories of their childhood fresh and remembered--- long after we are gone.  And I’m unabashedly proud to say that I am a good grandpa! The following anecdote is a typical memoir: 

In 2002, while visiting our children and grandkids in Philadelphia, I winced when our son, Bill, ordered five-year old Stevie, “Go to your room!” for misbehaving; but I kept my mouth shut, knowing not to intercede.  I bided my time for a couple days until Bill and Laurie went out for the evening while Grandma Sandy and I baby sat.  When Stevie did not respond to my reprimand and continued to push his little brother around, I sternly insisted he take a time-out by sitting on the bottom step of the staircase.  Later, with the boys asleep, I told Bill and Laurie about the incident and “innocently” added my feeling that being in his bedroom should always be associated with happy thoughts and experiences, never to be linked with a place of punishment. 

I asked Bill’s permission to share this anecdote only after recalling for him Eleanor Roosevelt’s account of ordering her little boy, Johnny, to his room.  Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her Pulitzer Prize winning book, No Ordinary Time, quotes Mrs. Roosevelt: “… having a feeling that he hadn’t gone, I went into my husband’s study at Hyde Park and found Johnny sitting in his  lap, weeping his heart out on his father’s shirt front, and both of them looking equally guilty when I discovered them.”

Maybe young parents, even an Eleanor Roosevelt, can become more easily frazzled and impatient than more seasoned grandparents who don’t face these trying moments day after day.

Our last night of that visit, while laying down with Stevie at bedtime, he told me sometimes he cannot fall asleep and was frightened of the dark and of monsters.  I reassured him, “there are no monsters; monsters are only make-believe and pretend.  This is your room, the safest place in the whole world.  And when you lie down at night, you can think of all the good things that happened to you today, and about all the people who love you.  And I especially want you to think about Grandma Sandy and me, and about how much fun we had this visit, and about what fun things we can do next time.”

Ain’t it wonderful to be a loving grandparent?  I’m thinking, perhaps fifty years from now, Stevie will reassure his own grandchild about the dark and about monsters and, in some mystical way, my love will be there with them.