Being a grandmother doesn’t change who you are: a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a wife, a mother. But the new role brings a different perspective on how you see yourself. Or how others may see you.
Does the title grandmother suddenly make one feel older, and look older to the world? Yes, it probably does. It conjures up the stereotypical picture-book image of a grandmother—you know the one I mean—a small, bespectacled, white-haired woman in a rocking chair, shawl over her shoulders, rug over knees and knitting needles on her lap. An idealised image of the perfect, meek and mild grandmother—a woman with her real life behind her.
If this is everybody’s idea of a perfect grandmother, then I, and millions of other grandmothers, fall down badly. I am the perfect opposite to that little lady: I do not own a rocking chair and my hair is not white because I have it coloured at the hairdresser’s regularly. I do, however, admit to a warm rug over my knees at night, and I can knit.
I used to knit socks and jumpers for my children, but as a grandmother I have no time to knit for my grandchildren. I am a working grandmother and I am not home long enough to pick up knitting needles. And really, who has time to wash woollen socks or woollen jumpers these days? A live-in grandmother, perhaps, or that woman with the rocking chair. Certainly not me.
The world has changed, and families have adapted and changed with it. For me, there are no rules, no code to follow about being a grandmother. It simply means that I am there for all my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, to give them my unconditional love, encouragement and support in whatever way I can, and so that they know how precious they are to me. By my presence and example in their lives, I hope each grandchild may have been inspired and motivated to be the best person they can be, to contribute to the wider world in their own way. I never wished to impose my expectations on them. I feel very strongly about this and have never lectured or instructed my grandchildren to follow a particular direction. Being there, being available, is enough.
On a more practical level, I cook for them. It is expected of me and I am entirely happy to comply. There have been countless wonderful meals shared by my entire family over many years, celebrating many milestones. The grandchildren are very familiar with sitting at Por Por’s (Cantonese for grandmother) table and eating my signature dishes. They know I will make a special effort to cook their favourites: traditional Chinese soups made from pure chicken stock, studded with special ingredients like lotus root, lily buds, red dates, goji berries, dried fungi and shiitake mushrooms. These soups have been passed down to me from my mother and my grandmother, but I wonder if they will survive down the generations of Chinese Australians so removed from their ancestors?
Chinese culture and traditional Chinese cuisine may be lost or diluted in the passage of time, but the love and respect for the food of their childhood will always have a strong pull for my children and grandchildren, and they come back ‘home’ to it time and time again. I know some traditional dishes have been passed on to them, because their own meals sometimes resemble mine. My celebrated roast chicken (cooked at every birthday), steamed fish with ginger and shallots, steamed egg custard and braised potato with Chinese bacon, beef and vegetable stir-fry—all these dishes now share the table with pasta and pizza.
I have raised four children, so feel pretty qualified to offer advice on how to care for babies and how to rear children. But, being a wise and loving grandmother, I usually refrain from doing so. With each new generation, there are new rules and regulations. Over my long life, I have seen, often with amazement, that what was once decreed to be the right and only way to care for babies and children has become wrong and outmoded. And, of course, it is so tempting to say ‘in my day…’, but I stop myself because I remember how differently I brought up my own babies compared to the way my mother brought up her brood of six.
When I am with my grandchildren, I marvel at the natural warmth and easy relationship I have with them, as opposed to the formal relationship I had with my own grandmother so long ago. According to traditional Chinese beliefs, old people are respected and revered. The young have yet to prove themselves and earn respect. I not sure that this is still the case in modern China, but perhaps these ways are still adhered to in the countryside.
I never knew my maternal grandmother, as she was unable to leave China under communist rule, and died in Hong Kong shortly after my father finally obtained a visa for her to come to Australia.
But I still have vivid memories of my paternal grandmother, from over eighty years ago. Grandma arrived from a village in southern China in 1934 with my mother, my sisters, my brother and me, aged three. Grandma lived with us until I was eight years old, after which she moved between our family and my uncles’ and aunties’ families. We were all closely involved in each other’s lives, as a typical Chinese extended family, and it was impossible to imagine life without Grandma.
Like me, my grandmother did not fit the Anglo picture-book image of the perfect grandmother. She was a feisty woman who lived by the Confucian philosophy that the old are to be revered by the young, that the younger generations take over all cares and burdens, making every effort to ensure for the comfort of the old. Consequently, Grandma expected those around her to do her bidding, and she was not willing to put up with nonsense from her grandchildren. In keeping with Chinese tradition, she was the honoured matriarch of the family, and her four sons, and especially her daughters-in-law, made sure she wanted for nothing. Her grandchildren were in awe of her. She certainly wasn’t the cuddly type. She would tell us stories about life back in China, how bandits would attack and the villagers would run into the hills for safety. But even when she issued a warning to us of the consequences of bad behaviour, I think we still sometimes took her words with a grain of salt.
Grandma was a diminutive figure, barely five feet tall. Her grey hair was tied back in a little bun at the nape of her neck, and she mostly wore a Chinese black silk trouser suit, or a black silk Chinese dress for more formal occasions. At home, she wore black, embroidered cloth shoes, encasing her tiny feet, which had been deformed from foot-binding when she was a young girl.
I was one of her twenty-three grandchildren, but my sisters and brother and I knew her better than my cousins did, as she had lived longer with us. She taught me how to knit during the Second World War. Japan had just attacked China and everyone in the overseas Chinese community in Australia threw themselves into the war effort through benefit concerts, food parcels, and knitted scarves and rugs for the soldiers. Grandma was the expert in our family: she taught my sisters and me to knit little squares out of different coloured skeins of wool, then my aunts would dutifully sew the squares together into rugs. Once there was a great furor when it was discovered that some naughty person had cut up all the squares that had just been carefully sewn together. Grandma guessed who that naughty person was, but I was thankful she never let on.
I also learnt from Grandma how to cook her favourite dish, beef and tomatoes, which I still cook today exactly as she taught me. Her recipe differs from other recipes of this dish I have seen. One of the major differences was that she always used ground beef, not finely sliced rump steak. I think now it may have been because Grandma found it easier to eat ground beef. I also imagine that Grandma was cooking dishes like this based on memories of village life in China, and that she had, over the years, re-created them to suit a different time and a different place.
A lovely memory I have of Grandma is her love of flowers. At that time, we lived near the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne, above a shop and factory. We were surrounded by concrete, but that did not stop my tiny Grandma from exercising her green thumb. In the cracks of the concrete driveway she planted seedlings, her favourite pansies and marigolds. The scents of her flowers, the smells of her cooking, all remain with me so strongly that I can instantly transport myself back with my grandmother. But if I were to name her real legacy, I would say it was her insistence on politeness and respect when addressing people, particularly those older than ourselves.
Grandma was adamant that we address our elders properly. The Chinese have titles for everyone—grandmother on your father’s side, fourth-youngest uncle, second-oldest aunt, eldest sister, younger brother and so on. Everyone must be greeted according to their standing in the hierarchy of the family and society. Even siblings are given titles. I was called third elder sister by Chinese friends outside the family, as I am the third girl in my family of six children. Even older friends or associates of the family are called uncle or aunt. To ignore this protocol and simply say ‘hello’ to relatives or to others is a gross error, an insult, and in my childhood would always invite the sternest rebuke from my parents or grandparents. I once did slip up, and I have never forgotten my grandmother’s reprimands. These days, when I hear a casual ‘hello’ in the Western manner from a young person to an older person, without the correct title, I still shudder in horror. The power of what my grandmother would think is still uppermost in my mind.
Nevertheless, it was inevitable that my life as an Australian girl outside of my Chinese home would have a huge influence on my outlook and habits. Unlike my grandmother, I am not held in awe as the family matriarch, nor do I expect or want that kind of status. I hold onto my independence fiercely, including my financial independence. I do not expect my children to do my bidding, although I do appreciate it if any of them offer help.
It is not the Chinese way to show or display affection, not even to one’s children and grandchildren. We grandchildren did not have an intimate relationship with Grandma; I do not remember any display of affection from her, no hugs, and especially no kisses. I remember feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed when my Australian girlfriends exchanged hugs and kisses with their parents and grandparents in public. I had never seen this before, and I thought how wonderful it was to be so free.
The Chinese of my generation view any public display of emotion or affection as inappropriate and distasteful. My own mother would show her love for me not with a hug or a kiss, but by cooking a special dish for my birthday, and I knew that the extra piece of roast pork or dumpling given to me was evidence that I was loved. That was enough. In Chinese culture, which had often been defined by famine, food assumes particular importance. Food can, indeed, equal love.
In my own life, I admit I have a little of that Chinese distaste for public shows of affection but, thank God, I have no hesitation when it comes to my own grandchildren and I give them lots of hugs and kisses. My five grandchildren know that I love them all dearly, in spite of the fact that I have never been an available, babysitting grandmother.
For most of my life I have been a working woman, and have not had the luxury of many free days or nights, so babysitting has simply not been on my agenda. My grandchildren inherited a working grandmother who could hardly find time for herself, let alone care for them. My children, Michael, Katrina, Andrea and Richard, have always been excellent parents, and have always known and accepted that I had to be a working mum, and then a working grandmother. They understood that I could not be on call for babysitting duties. I don’t know if this was a disappointment to them, but if this was the case, they never showed it in any way. And I have not allowed myself to feel overly guilty that I was not sharing the responsibility of raising their children. I could not be a mother all over again.
I became a grandmother with the birth of Gabrielle in 1982. Four more grandchildren followed: three beautiful girls, Fiona, Jessica and Teresa, and a wonderful boy, Jai. With each birth, I felt joy, pride and gratitude that these little miracles were a part of our family, as I did with the births of Felicity and Theodore, my great-grandchildren—the bonds that tie are just as strong as when my children were born.
I have grown to enjoy the title of grandmother. In fact the position is rather an exalted one: ‘big’ is one thing, but when big becomes bigger and more important, then it is ‘grand’! So I can be forgiven for being delighted when each grandchild is born and my title becomes even more significant. The new mother and father are usually overwhelmed with the care of their new baby, whereas I can shower unconditional love, free of the stress of responsibility. It is a new and perfect luxury, an unexpected and mysterious thing, but there is no denying the sense of belonging, the sense of continuity when you cradle one of your newborn grandchildren or great-grandchildren who have the same bloodline as yourself. Is DNA the reason for that deep emotional pull that is at once protective and possessive, full of pride and humility?
I know that each grandmother’s experience is unique and there are as many different types of grandmothers as there are grains of rice. Some grandmothers, lonely now that their own children have grown up, become mothers again; they cannot wait to do it all once more. These grandmothers are there for their grandchildren 24/7. What a boon for working parents, knowing their little ones are being cared for by their own mothers, knowing they are safe and secure in a family environment.
In these cases, everyone benefits: the young parents can keep their jobs (in most cases, out of sheer necessity) and that wonderful bond between grandmother and grandchild is established, a close and a unique relationship that will last forever.
And yet I am troubled by another side to this arrangement, that of the grandmother taking on again the motherly duties she performed many years ago. In old China, certainly not today, families of two generations lived together under one roof, including the unmarried sister or aunt, who was also a part of the household. Household duties were shared by all members of the family, and the children were cared for by everyone. In that other world, that other time, a grandmother did not have interests of her own. Her life was focused on her family, and she would have been mystified if someone had suggested that she needed her own time and space.
A grandmother has other burdens and it does not seem right to me that she should repeat her life in this way, mothering, unless she truly wants to do it all over again. Nature has decreed that women over a certain age cannot bear children. I am sure this is because nature also knows that women at a certain age do not have the emotional or physical strength and stamina to look after babies and small children full-time.
There is a great deal of pressure on young couples, who may be saving to buy their first home, keeping up payments on a mortgage, running a car, maintaining a certain lifestyle. With the arrival of a baby, the demands increase, so how do the new parents continue to have it all? Often it is simply assumed that grandmothers are around with time on their hands, that they will be besotted with the children, and that they will be happy to give up some of their days for childminding.
Sometimes a grandmother might be willing, without realising that the physical demands on her body are too much. She is reluctant to tell her daughter or son, and let them down, and so, as usual, she soldiers on. This is a common scenario these days. I do admire those grandmothers who can do it.
My grandchildren have grown into beautiful young adults. While leading different lives, they are all similar threads in the tapestry of our family. Not so long ago those threads were all in China. We must remember that. I am one of the lucky ones who can tell a happy story—my immigrant parents settled in Australia and made a good life here for themselves and their children and contributed a lot to their new society. They gave us the best of both worlds. More than that, they gave us a strong set of values, of fairness and kindness. In turn, I have tried to instil those values in my own children and grandchildren, who contribute to life in this country with love and integrity. I am so proud of them all.
My grandchildren will not remember their grandmother as a little white-haired lady rocking gently in a chair. I hope they will remember her as someone who has inspired them to celebrate life in all its richness, and to never forget to give thanks for all the goodness that is theirs.