A friend is planning a trip to California--to see old friends whose eldest grandson is about to have a Bar Mitzvah. The California friends date back to my friend's youth and the two families--one on the east coast, the other on the west coast--have stayed close for years. My friend's children and their children are invited. It will be close-friends reunion.
As a special treat, my friend is planning to fly out to Los Angeles four days ahead of time with her 10-year-old granddaughter, her first and oldest grandchild. It will be a mini-vacation together for the two of them. Last year, she took this much-loved grandchild to Paris. She sees the Los Angeles trip as a continuation of a tradition: Grandmother and granddaughter going someplace special together--and bonding ever closer.
Then her daughter, the mother of her Grand, had second thoughts. Maybe she got cold feet. Or just wanted to be part of the holiday. Or something. "I'll come with you," she told her mother. "Wouldn't that be fun?"
My friend said no, it would not be fun. It was, in fact, a deal breaker. It would change the whole nature of the trip. When the parents are around, grandchildren relate to their nanas and poppies in a very different way. Instead of being the center of the grandchild's world for those few days, the grandparent--no matter how loving or special--is second fiddle. There's no longer the one-on-one relationship. Actually, my friend put the bottom line this way: If her daughter came along, she said, "I'd just be a credit card."
