Minimum Wage for Grandparents

Whenever I’m visiting another city, or another country, I pick up a local newspaper to see what’s on people’s minds there. Last month when Mark and I were in Greece with our daughter and grandson, I found an English edition of Kathimerini, published in Athens.

The October 4-5 issue ran a little story that gladdened my heart, headlined “Bulgarian government to pay pensioners to babysit grandchildren as of January 1.” The story went on to relate how, starting January 2009, pensioners (retired people) will be paid the minimum wage for looking after their grandchildren when they take over child care when the parents return to work.

The Bulgarian Parliament just passed this amendment to the country’s Employment Encouragement law “to help young parents better combine their professional and family engagements.” The amendment allows grandparents to look after a child during its first three years in return for a 240-leva (123 euros, or 156 dollars at current exchange rates) bonus to their pensions, which equals Bulgaria’s minimum wage.

In 2006, in an effort to raise the country’s falling birth rate, Bulgaria introduced measures allowing parents to take 315 days’ leave, the longest in Europe, while continuing to earn 90 percent of their salaries. Wouldn’t both these laws be a godsend here for parents and grandparents!

Traveling with a Grandchild

I have traveled several times with my grandchildren, ranging in age from 10 months through 19 years, most of the time with the children’s mothers as well. Last month my husband, Mark, and I traveled with Stefan, our firstborn grandchild, now 25 years old – and yes, also with his mother, our daughter, Jenny.

This latest trip was quite different from the others, consisting, as it did, of four adults traveling together. Although Mark and I had made the basic plans for our week’s trip to Greece – where we would go and where we would stay, once we were traveling our decisions were joint ones among the four of us. We all had a say in where to eat, what to do, which sights to visit, and how to get to them. And it was a delight to see how much Stefan’s presence added to our enjoyment of the trip. For one thing, we appreciated his strong young muscles as he helped us wrestle our suitcase up and down stairs, on and off the Metro, and into and out of tiny old-fashioned hotel elevators. But probably his biggest asset was his winning personality. He made a lovely new friend at a museum in Athens who was good company as she spent the evening with us. Then he found us the perfect guide to take us around the Greek island of Naxos for an unusual tour of the natural world on this lovely island. And throughout the week whenever we needed to make a telephone call for information, Stefan handled the job.

Another contribution from Stefan was a game he brought with him, which livened conversation around tables and on bus and ferry trips. Called "Black Stories," this German-language game has cards that posit a situation and give a few facts about it -- and then everyone except the person who has read the back of the card guesses what could have led to the outcome. I have looked for this game in English but haven't been successful. If anyone knows about anything similar, I'd love to hear about it.

Years before, we had been thrilled the first times each of our daughters outgrew the constant need to be cared for and supervised, and showed us how much they could contribute to our lives. Now it’s exciting to see the same kind of development and giving back occurring with our grandchildren.

When Grandchildren Help Plan a Trip

Since several of the super grannies I interviewed for my book SUPER GRANNY (due out in March and now in page proofs) told me about trips they had taken with their grandchildren, I was delighted to talk with Heather Larson as she was researching her article on involving children in planning a trip.

I was especially happy to tell Heather the story about Dee Poujade of Oregon, whose seven-year-old granddaughter, Michaela, did so much of the planning for their glorious week in London. Some of the other ideas in Heather’s article involved going to a place where a child has written a school report, involving children in your own hobbies, and capitalizing on their interest in favorite books.

To read Heather’s lively article, which was posted earlier this month on the really helpful site, www.grandparents.com, go to: http://www.grandparents.com/gp/printarticle/travel/travel-tips/article/getaways-that-grandchildren-can-plan.html

The gift of being a grandmother

Earlier this month I came across a beautiful paean to grandmothering. It was posted on the online site of Mothering Magazine and written by author and grandmother Angela Rossmanith. To access the entire article, go to: http://www.mothering.com/articles/body_soul/inspiration/another-kind-of-gift.html. Meanwhile, though, here’s a little taste of a discovery that so many grandparents can relate to:
“I loved my children, and of course I still do and always will, but this love I have for my grandchild is a source of enormous wonder to me. From the moment I saw her, very new and tiny, this little girl has revealed to me a fresh dimension of life, a deepening and broadening of perspective. She has been a great and gracious gift.”
Then Rossmanith goes on to tell several lyrical stories about the gifts that grandmothers give to their grandchildren. Reading them makes me realize that some of the memories our grandchildren have of us are not the ones we would have thought made an impression, but here as in so much else in life we can’t predict what becomes important to someone else.
I plan to ask my grandchildren about some of their memories of me. I’m very curious to find out what they say. Fortunately, I’m still around to keep making memories. In my next posting I’ll talk about some of the most recent memories that I hope will stay with the grandchildren.

Celebrating Birthdays

This is a big birthday month in our family. Last week I had a big birthday and was thrilled to be celebrating it with my family, at least the ones who live in the United States. Mark and I went out for dinner with daughters Nancy and Dorri, granddaughters Anna and Nina, Dorri’s boyfriend, Steve, my dear cherished friend of many years, Mickey, and her daughter, Rifka (whom I first met when she was 18 months old and my oldest was 12 months). I loved the poems that Anna and Nina wrote for me and the photo montage of family and friends that Dorri created. It was a casual get-together where we went to a little restaurant, ordered loads of hors d’oeuvres and light entrees and passed everything around the table, so we all had tastes of everything. And I got to talk a little bit with everyone – good tastes there too. Which is how I like to live life – enjoying little tastes of lots of experiences.

Now next week Mark and I will be celebrating with our daughter Jenny, who’s having a big birthday herself, and this time we’ll be enjoying eating experiences (along with other experiences -- but eating certainly is a big part of most celebrations!) with Jenny and her three children. Aside from family meals and a special dinner out, by tradition in the little town where she lives (and maybe throughout Germany), birthdays are celebrated with kaffeetrinken – wonderful home baked cakes and coffee in the mid- to late- afternoon, enjoyed with family and close friends. Maybe we’ll even eat the brownies I baked after special requests from Maika and Lisa (no nuts) and Jenny (yes, nuts). So I made both kinds, and again we’ll have choices – and tastes.

It’s hard to live so far away from children and grandchildren, especially around special occasions, but we’re very lucky that we can stay in touch in so many ways – free or cheap ways to phone, along with email, of course, and even an occasional postcard or letter – which usually takes only two or three days to travel between New York and Germany. My birthday card from grandson Stefan came in the form of a note in a bottle – only the bottle was designed to carry postage and to be mailed – a little more reliable than dropping the bottle in the Atlantic. Of course, we’re even luckier that we can make occasional visits there and that they can come here – not as often as we all would like, but precious when they do occur.

So I won’t be writing in these pages for a few weeks, and meanwhile I send good wishes and happy celebrating to all grannies and grandkids – and to the generation in between.

Why Women Need to Vote

I am very excited about a recent family development. My eldest granddaughter, Maika, has just registered to vote in her first presidential election. I remember the first presidential election I voted in, in 1956 – my candidate didn’t win, but that didn’t discourage me from future voting – and I haven’t missed an election yet.

My mother was a witness to history. In 1920, the first year that women in the United States were allowed to vote, she was 20 years old and too young to cast a ballot, but she still told me that she celebrated that day. She knew how much other women had worked and dared and had suffered for that right for more than 70 years.

On November 15, 1917, which became known as the “Night of Terror, the warden at the Occoquan workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they had dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote. Forty prison guards went on a rampage, using their clubs to beat the 33 women wrongly convicted of obstructing sidewalk traffic. (All the convictions were eventually overturned.) Lucy Burns was chained by her hands to the cell bars above her head, left hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. Dora Lewis was knocked unconscious. When Alice Cosu, her cellmate, thought Dora was dead, she suffered a heart attack.

Their food was full of worms, which often floated to the surface of the thin soup they were given; their only water came from an open pail. The open toilets could be flushed only by a guard, who decided when to flush. When Alice Paul embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat, and poured liquids into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this three times a day for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press, and newspapers around the country reported what was happening. All the suffragists were released on November 27 and 28, 1917. Alice served five weeks.

Two grannies, a friend and a cousin, sent me an email with photos of these women. I appreciated the reminder. This story and more are told on the Women in History website, http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/index.html, and in the HBO movie, now out on DVD, “Iron Jawed Angels.” I haven’t seen it yet, but I plan to. After learning all of this, can any of us, and our daughters and granddaughters, fail to exercise our hard-won right to vote??? And to vote responsibly -- not because a candidate is good-looking or a woman or can tell a good story -- but because we honestly believe that this person will govern responsibly and well on the vitally important issues of the day.

INTERNET/NETWORKING GRANNIES

One of the joys of writing this book(“Super Granny”) in this technological age is the number of super grannies I have connected with, some of whom have been so helpful to me. One granny whose blog I admired gave me practical help in setting up my own blog. Another gave me a recipe that my granddaughter loved making – and that we all enjoyed eating. And another helped to put me in touch with a woman I had known and admired years ago but had fallen out of touch with.

And now I had the chance to connect two of the grannies I interviewed for Super Granny. I was interviewed myself last week about how grandparents can involve their grandchildren in planning a trip. I immediately told the interviewer about Dee (whose story I tell in the book), who used some great ways to involve seven-year-old Michaela in planning their trip to London. When I then contacted Dee to tell her I had given her name to the interviewer, she told me she was now thinking about taking Michaela on an intergenerational Elderhostel trip, maybe to Costa Rica. I immediately thought of another interviewee, Shirley Bee, who had told me about taking her granddaughter, Kelsie Lee, on an Elderhostel trip to Costa Rica, and how much both generations enjoyed it. (Kelsie Lee told me so herself.) So I put Dee and Shirley Bee in touch with each other, Dee was able to ask questions, and Shirley Bee able to answer them and to share her enthusiasm for the trip.

It’s a whole new world for us grannies!