If your parents live at the Jersey Shore, you’ve won the beach house lottery. Your spouse and children will get the best two weeks of summer vacation anyone could dream of. The paddle boards, crab traps and every other beach accessory is rental free, and home cooking waits at the end of every beach day. Grandma remembered your favorite dessert and you even have your own reserved parking spot.
What could be better? In a word: you.
As a public service to grandparents everywhere, I invite you to take a look at things from their perspective. What follows are a few points to consider. They might even broaden your perspective. Remember, before long, you might be a grandparent with a beach house as well.
1. You are not our life coach.
We don’t care about your crystal meditation, anabolic hot yoga or aromatherapy. We have already made it. We retired at the beach. We know you wouldn’t visit us for two weeks straight if we lived elsewhere. We’re just fine with ourselves.
2. We don’t like your food or your music.
There’s a reason that the sale of old music surpassed new releases about the time you started consuming it. Our music had heart, imagination, depth, and beauty. Yours is a prepackaged assault on our ears. Either use headphones or turn that garbage off.
Speaking of prepackaged garbage, we are having steak and eggs for breakfast, and chicken, fresh jersey corn and tomatoes for dinner. We don’t want some unpronounceable gut biome, or other organic wonder food from some place we never heard of. We’re happy with what we eat.
3. We are not your kids.
We were not your friends when we were raising you; we were your parents.
Our grandkids, however, are a different story. The truth is, we are the people you warned them about. 100% pure bad influence. You can make all the lists you want about the importance of the schedule and no treats before dinner and safety and blah, blah, blah. You may even notice a glazed over look in our eyes about 5 minutes into your lecture. There is an old saying: “The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is because they have a common enemy.” That’s never going to change.
4. Our health is bad.
In the book, “Conclave,” Cardinal Lawrence asks Cardinal Tedesco how he is. Cardinal Tedesco replies, “At our age, who is well?” This applies to us as well.
We cannot always hike or watch too many kids at once or whatever activity you request of us anymore. We don’t want to alarm you with the details and no vitamins or management by you is going to make it any better. Father Time is undefeated. It’s a fact of life.
5. We have a life of our own.
Maybe it’s a big bocce ball tournament or a pinochle grudge match. But these things are important to us. We may even opt to go to our friends’ party over one of the grandkids’ many events.
We actually laugh, tell dirty jokes with our old friends, and even talk politics without yelling at each other. It doesn’t mean that we don’t love you. But we love each other too — very much after all these years. We want to go out on a date, without you at times.
6. We will not officiate our kids’ disputes over who gets which weeks during the summer.
Work it out among yourselves and just tell us the results. If you think we have a favorite child, it’s only because we have a favorite child. And it’s probably not you. Still, we don’t want to hear who deserves which week over someone else.
7. Don’t take our stuff. Really.
We know you need a phone charger. So do we. That’s why we bought it. If you take our phone charger, it’s stealing. It doesn’t make it any better that it’s from your parents. In fact, it makes it worse. Any good vacation has a few broken items. Build some extra time into your schedule to fix the things around our house that the grandchildren break.
8. We won’t be around too much longer.
Let’s enjoy a sunset together.
Finally, if any of my friends shows this article to any one of my kids, it will be the last thing you do.
Vincent Malfitano is the author of Ocean City, New Jersey, America’s Greatest Family Resort: A Crime Novel
