A Westphalia Guest Column

I like making lists. Shopping lists, to-do lists, emails to answer, questions to ask the doctor, books to read, ideas for the chapter I’m working on, things to discuss in the zoom meeting, you name it. But I’m not the kind who won’t go to bed until every item is checked off (that’s beyond my modest ambitions), and I do occasionally cheat by listing something I’ve already done. It’s comforting to a crowded mind to have something to fall back on, and it adds structure to the day.

I had always assumed the habit was more or less universal until I went to a team-building retreat with colleagues in Minnesota and drew a friendly laugh with my earnest enthusiasm. It turns out there are other ways of remembering things. Counting on fingers, for example, or creating acronyms. But what I do works for me, and I’m very attached to it.

So, one of the things on my list recently was to read the story my science fiction group was going to discuss: “Amaryllis,” by Carrie Vaughn, published in 2010. It’s set in a future of limited resources where everything is rationed, including the right to have children. The story is about motherhood, and it manages to introduce a surprising number of variations on the theme. There are authorized and unauthorized pregnancies; birth and adoptive mothers; single, married and group styles of mothering.

It’s a good story, and the theme is well presented. It got me thinking about different kinds of motherhood, and how different kinds work for different people. Not being a mother myself, I hadn’t put a lot of thought into the subject before. Fatherhood either, for that matter. But I have been thinking lately about another hood my marriage has brought into my life, one that I wouldn’t otherwise have had any way of knowing: grandmotherhood -- or in my case, step-grandmotherhood.

Abby has four grandchildren, and all of them are currently living within forty miles of us. Abby has known them since they were babies, but they came into my life at a later stage for all of us, and I can’t say enough how fortunate I feel. I never expected, at my advanced age, to learn a new language -- grandmother-ese. It goes like this: “Nobody’s grandchildren are smarter, more talented, or better-looking than mine.” I had mastered this sentence before, but it used to be “Nobody’s cats.”

Being a grandmother is far and away the most rewarding role I’ve ever experienced. Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Guam isn’t even in the running. I’d like to be able to thank their mothers, who brought them into the world, for all they went through to help them become the wonderful kids they are. And while I’m at it, a shoutout to my niece and her husband for doing a great job with my very own, appropriately designated, great nephew.

So if the old year has anything to teach us and the new one any joy to bring us, it may just be the fact that you’re never too old for a new hood.

Put that on your list.