A grandparent by any other name
Grandkids are great — whether they call you Grammie, Granddad, Popoo or Nanoo
Many of us who have grandchildren groaned in January to read in this paper of the 50-year-old record-setting balloonist “grandmother.”
As if her children’s fertility had anything to do with her accomplishment. Is it any wonder that whether we’re 50 or 80, calling ourselves Grandma or Grandpa affects others’ perceptions of us.
Are you ready to call yourself Grandma or Grandpa? I wasn’t, and decided to call myself BabaLou, a nice play, I thought, on the Yiddish word for grandma and my own name. I get a thrill every time my granddaughter calls me BabaLou. My husband decided he would be called Zaida. The other grandparents opted for Grandma and Grandpa.
Great-grandmother Mary Dooher said that in her youth “‘Grandma’ epitomized the stayat-home older lady who baked cookies and gave out sage advice.
“I did not want to be one of those grandmothers,” said Dooher, 82. “I wanted to bring more than cookies and a warm house to visit. I wanted to introduce my grandkids to the world of theatre and literature. It could have been done under the label of grandmother, but not for me. Our grandchildren are not allowed to call us Grandma and Grandpa. We are simply Mare and Frank. However, the great-grandchild calls us Mare-Mare and Frankie.”
Dooher, who became a grandparent in her late 40s, said “for some reason or other I did not want to become labelled ‘Grandma.’ I had a mother-in-law who was called Granny Dooher, and my mother who was called Granny Miz (short for Misericordia). Both grandmothers were exemplary women and they worked very hard at being the best grandmothers ever. Both grandfathers had passed before the grandkids were born.”
Her six children started calling their parents by their first names when they became teenagers and “we did not object in the least. ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ slip out from time to time, but mostly it is just Mare and Frank. Our oldest grandson is now 34 and the youngest is 15. Our great-grandson is five and is soon about to be joined by a baby brother.
“I loved being a grandmother, and love even more being a greatgrandmother,” said Dooher, but that doesn’t mean she likes being called one. “Do I sound a bit odd? I hope not. I think this is a great age when people over 80 are not considered old at all. While we have dropped the traditional titles, we have not given up on bringing lots of discipline, love and comfort to our little darlings.”
Loreen O’Blenis’ grandsons called her “Grammie” because that’s how her husband Dave’s family addressed their grandmother, she said. “Now that the boys are teenagers — ages 15 and 13 — they call me ‘Gram,’ which seems to fit.”
She said “the little ones aged two and four call me ‘Grammie.’ They call their other grandparents who are French-speaking ‘Papa’ and ‘Mimi.’ Dave is ‘Granddad’ to all four. When I was growing up we used ‘Grandma’ and ‘Grampa’; perhaps that was a different generation.”
Anna Quarrington’s Ottawa grandsons call her “Grandma” or “Granmaman.” “The ones down in Hamilton call me ‘Big Mummy.’ ”
Ingrid and Paul Tuomy’s children called their grandma “Nana” and so for the next generation, “we asked ours to call us Nana, but it turned into “Nanoo,” said Ingrid, “which was great because they call their grandfather ‘Popoo’ which is Greek. So we’re Popoo and Nanoo.”
When I searched the web thesaurus for grandma synonyms for this article, I found the usual baba, gran, granny, nan, nanna et cetera, but was shocked to find as well: crone, dame, dowager, frump, and worse — old battle-axe, warhorse, witch and hag!
Yikes! If we don’t define ourselves in a positive way, others are unfortunately standing by.