...seat twenty in pinch ... Remember the desk Muddie made for herself from packing cases? ... Yeah. She did a good job. It looked just fine with that polished sideboard and the big couch with the carved back railing ... Remember all the china and silverware in the sideboard cupboards, and the layers of ironed table linen in the drawers? ... And that little barrel on top of the sideboard with peanut chocolate in it ...

THEY WERE SISTER and brother, aged seventy-four and eighty-one, remembering their grandparents' house. They are members of one of the early generations of grandparents able, because of greatly increased longevity in advanced nations in the last century or so, to store detailed and complex recollection of their own grandparents. This brother and sister come from a farming family. Their grandfather and grandmother lived a hundred kilometres away, an excellent geographical separation with which to imprint memory by combining the intimacy that comes from propinquity with a two-hour journey by car, and half a day on horseback, that made a visit (especially with sleepover) as good as a foreign vacation.

It's an odd calling, grandparenthood, somewhat buffeted by history, and its duties and privileges ill defined. Contemporary instability in the institution of marriage and the pressures of child raising in two-career families appear to be creating a new role for grandparents as assistant parents--even surrogates, in growing numbers. Whether surrogacy is a good thing and whether we grandparents are up to it are questions that need more careful consideration than they have so far been given.

A fellow practitioner pointed out to me recently that you never actually plan to become a grandparent, or even think about it, as you do about being a husband or wife, mother or father. Only when the moment is virtually upon you, do you realise that...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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