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Take Heart, For The Sake Of Your Children

Take Heart, For The Sake Of Your Children

 

This has become too rare, I suddenly realized — this unscheduled gift of a moment.

I was sitting on the small sofa in our front room, watching our 3-year-old granddaughter Carolyn as she arranged a family of toy mice on top of the trunk that doubles as a coffee table. She was softly singing a made-up song, seemingly oblivious to me until I heard the ending: “…and Grandma is right there, watching me.”

She looked up at me and smiled. “I see you,” I said.

Her soft mention reminded me of what her mother, Liz, had once yelled during a family gathering when she was 5 years old. “When I say, ‘Please pass the grandmother,’ it means I want some attention.”

I didn’t know Liz back then. I didn’t even meet her until the year before I married her father, when she was still a teenager. Nevertheless, I know many of her and her sister’s funny quotes from childhood because, for more than a dozen years of his single parenthood, Sherrod wrote down their exchanges in his “Funny Book.” By the time I met him, the “Funny Book” had become a cherished family heirloom. He hand-copied every page, twice, so that he could give each daughter a copy on her wedding day.

Early in my columnist career — 16 years ago, to be precise — I wrote about Sherrod’s “Funny Book,” in the hope that it would inspire others to start their own books for the children in their lives. Back then, I used to share personal stories fairly frequently, on the advice of my editor, Stuart Warner. Revealing the less political parts of me, he argued, might close the distance with more conservative readers who thought we had nothing in common.

Maybe they hated my views on abortion, for example, but could appreciate stories from my life as a single mom. The same people outraged about my long support for same-sex marriage might see themselves in my love for Springsteen and Motown, my faith in the comforts of a denim jacket and my over-the-top affection for my dog. Some of my favorite reader letters begin with, “I hate your politics, but…”

In the last three years or so, I’ve lost touch with that part of myself as a columnist. Our country is in crisis, and sides are bitterly drawn. After Donald Trump was elected, I started thinking that virtually every column I write must deal with Very. Serious. Things.

Well, what could be more serious than the state of our hearts?

When our first grandchild started talking, I bought a leather-bound notebook. The “Grandparents’ Funny Book,” we call it, and it is slowly filling with stories of our seven grandchildren’s lives.

Page 14: “Grandma,” 3-year-old Jackie said as I was cooking at the stove, “sometimes I say #*@^ and I’m not supposed to.”

Fortunately, I’d had prior warning of this new habit. “Well,” I said, “sometimes I say #*@^, too, and I’m not supposed to. How about we both agree to stop saying it? Deal?”

“Deal.”

Page 5: In the summer of 2012, Sherrod was walking 4-year-old Clayton into preschool.

Clayton: “Grandpa, wanna know a secret?”

Sherrod: “Sure, buddy.”

Clayton: “I go a lot faster if you stop saying, ‘Go faster.'”

Page 21, thanks to a Facebook post from son-in-law Matt: “Lately, Leo has been waking up in the morning and joyously screaming: ‘It’s the next day! Look, the sun is out! It’s the next day!'”

Reading these pages full of our grandchildren’s words slows my pulse and reminds me why I’m still in the fight. It sounds cliche to say you want to have the right answer when your grandchildren one day ask what you did during this time in our country — until you imagine being on the receiving end of that question. It turns out that the mother who never wanted to let her children down is now the grandmother who hopes to make their children proud.

As I am writing this, I am on a flight to visit my 3-year-old grandson Milo and his younger sister, Ela. My daughter’s birthday is tomorrow, and this trip is a surprise, thanks to her husband. I used to think no one could love my Cait enough, until I met Alex.

Milo and I have big plans. We discussed over FaceTime last week what we would bake for his mother’s birthday. “Mommy wants a cake and cupcakes,” he assured me. “She needs both.”

Well then, that is what we shall make, and I will make note of his instructions in our “Grandparents’ Funny Book.” Years from now, I want Milo to know that, in this time of great turmoil in our country, Grandma Connie was hanging on his every word.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University’s school of journalism. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: Connie Schultz’s husband — and co-grandparent — Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

It’s Summer, The Season For Grandparents

It’s Summer, The Season For Grandparents

Two summers ago, my then-6-year-old grandson propped himself on a comfy chair and clasped his hands behind his head to watch me make a spectacle of myself in our kitchen.

I was performing, as if grinding 4 cups of fresh basil into pesto were the ceremonial equivalent of turning water into wine.

“Now, let us add the minced garlic!” I yelled over the food processor. He pumped his fist in the air.

“Next, the lemon!”

“Woo-hoo!” he yelled.

This was to be our final big-family dinner before my grandson and his parents whittled our numbers by moving far, far away to a new job awaiting his father — formerly known as my son, before he announced he was moving my grandson far, far away.

Away from me, I want to emphasize.

For my grandson, I was determined to be jolly.

I picked up the bottle of olive oil and raised it in the air. “And here we have the olive oil! Extra-virgin! Don’t ask what that means!”

He smiled.

I brandished the salt and pepper mills. “And must I remind our television audience that we only use freshly ground salt and pepper?”

He waved his arms. I shut off the processor and offered forced smile No. 223. “What is it, honey?”

“Grandma,” he said, his brow knitted with concern. “What are you going to do without me?”

We interrupt this cooking extravaganza so that Grandma can scurry off to the bedroom and bury her face into the skirt of her apron.

He is my first grandchild. He was the only one to lay claim to the title of “only” for nearly five years before our family’s baby boom would give him four cousins in three years. Until then, he had me all to himself. The best word to describe our mutual affection during that time: smitten.

We had our own habits, our own ways. By the time he was 3, one of our rituals involved my looking up at the ceiling as if I were pondering a question for the ages. “Hmm,” I’d say, “who’s the center of the universe?”

“I am!” he’d say, to the head-shaking groans of anyone within earshot who claimed to love us.

This was the child about to leave me — the child wise enough at age 6 to see right through me. Two years later, his mother tells me he sleeps with my letters under his pillow. I cannot type that without pausing for a moment. The relationship between a child and a grandparent is the closest I’ve ever come to experiencing magic.

Here is where I admit I have set you up — maybe. My grandson and I are not what you might assume us to be. I did not meet his daddy until his daddy was 6, through marriage. I was raising his father full time by the time he was 8. Ten years after my divorce, he walked me down the aisle to marry the man who is the love of my life.

If you were ever misguided enough to tell me that our beginnings mean he is not my son, our conversation would be brief, and I dare say you would not enjoy it. He is my son, and he has given me this miracle of a grandson.

That is only the beginning of this crazy tale of this family of ours. My husband and I brought two children each into our marriage, and we now have five grandchildren, period. Challenge this at your peril.

Why am I telling you all of this, you might wonder.

Well, it’s summer, which is that time of year when so many grandparents long to see the children they love no matter what. No matter who is divorcing. No matter who brought them into the world. No matter who is angry with whom.

Children should not bear the burden of unfinished grudges. This is especially true now, when the briefest snippet of overheard news via TV or radio can make a child believe the world has lost its collective mind.

I’m not saying grandparents are perfect or that we’re even someone you’d choose for neighbors. But we are in this for your children. For so many of us, the moment we become grandparents, in whatever way that happens, something changes in us.

Your children become the center of our universe. Shouldn’t they know that? Shouldn’t all children, everywhere, get to feel that way at least once in their lives?

 

Editor’s note: Connie Schultz filed this on American Airlines Flight 1068, her second flight of three to spend a week with the grandchild who rightly worried about what she would do without him.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University’s school of journalism. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo: An American Airlines airplane prepares to land at the Jose Marti International Airport in Havana September 19, 2015.  REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins 

Why Calling Hillary Clinton ‘Grandmother’ Is Not A Smear

Why Calling Hillary Clinton ‘Grandmother’ Is Not A Smear

Did you know that Hillary Clinton is a grandmother?

You probably did. After all, the birth of daughter Chelsea’s own daughter, Charlotte, was covered with nearly as much fanfare as some other famous female offspring, like Kim Kardashian’s North West, or Beyoncé’s Blue Ivy.

Out of the other candidates running for president in 2016, do you know who else is a grandparent?

No?

Try Jeb Bush and Rick Perry.

Do you know the names of any of their grandkids?

Didn’t think so.

And why hide it? While there are some cries of “sexism” to Hillary positioning herself as a grandmother, it’s become part of her political strategy.

Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist and alum of President Bill Clinton’s White House, told Politico, “When she offers a theory of government and connects it to her biography, in particular being a mom and a grandma, and talking about intergenerational equity issues and the possibility to do right by your kids — the combination there is a really, really powerful way to communicate.”

Clinton has been dedicated to family issues since she was a lawyer in the ’70s, and has continued to push for legislation that protects women and children. Her résumé is filled with fights for policies that have benefited families, and her campaign has used her experience in both the political and personal arenas as assets.

“Grandmother” might be a term that other female politicians shy away from because it could conjure up thoughts of age. And no politician wants to be thought of as too old to run, especially Clinton, who will be 69 on Election Day 2016, just a few months shy of Ronald Reagan when he was elected to the White House in 1980. John McCain was dogged by criticism regarding his age when in ran in 2008; he was 72 at the time of the election.

Yet even though there are other grandmas in public office — Congresswoman and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, 75, is one of them — it’s not a term that’s readily used when referring to women running for office. Or ascending any sort of career ladder.

Grandfathers, by contrast, are almost never named as such. It’s an afterthought in their biography. See, again, Jeb Bush and Rick Perry — or Mitt Romney.

So why is it an advantage?

“Like most grandmothers I know…”

“When you have this little baby, you spend a lot of time just staring at her,” Clinton said in November. “You really resolve, as her parents and grandparents … [to] do whatever we can to make sure she has the opportunities she deserves to have.”

Connie Schultz, a three-time grandmother herself, laughs at all the chatter associated with “grandma“:

Like most grandmothers I know, I still get worked up about the same issues I’ve always cared about, from abortion rights to same-sex marriage. That’s the thing about seeing your children get on with their lives and have babies. It’s liberating, as if you’ve just been given permission to hone your focus with pinprick precision.

Following advice from former campaign strategist Mark Penn in 2008, Clinton shied away from being seen as a “mama in chief,” preferring to be seen as tough, in the vein of Margaret Thatcher.

Since that tactic failed to win her the nomination and, in the intervening years, matters of women’s health, equal pay, and reproductive rights became key issues in national politics, it makes sense for Clinton to highlight and truly own those parts of her identity and biography, rather than let opponents try to use them against her.

Her staff now is filled with women in many key roles, and 60 percent of her donors are female, too.

In fact, according to the Barbara Lee Foundation, which studies the role of women in politics, female candidates who play up personal experiences and emphasize their relationships can make them more relatable and therefore likeable, which is linked to electability — especially when they are perceived to be qualified.

And so it seems “grandmother” is less smear than imprimatur — why wouldn’t Hillary Clinton use it in her campaign strategy?

Photo: World leaders — and grandparents. Bill Clinton via Twitter