As soon as I started telling all my friends about our new upcoming status as grandparents, everyone started asking me what I was going to have baby Rachel call me! We already figured Ben would be either Grandpa or Granddad, but choosing a name for a grandmother to be called, in these days, I guess, is easier said than done!
There are a lot of possibilities out there now. Nana, Nanny, Meme, Gigi, Gran, Mom-mom, Grammy, Glamma, Grams; these are just some of the now popular names for grandmother.
I even looked up some of the name possibilities on line, and I was amazed. I can’t imagine being called GaMo, or Memo, Mimi, Nonny, Lally, Pippa, Glammy….and that’s some of the more reasonable ones!
Guess I’m a bit behind the times. I do have some friends who decided (and rightly so) that becoming a grandmother at the age of forty, although they were thrilled about it, didn’t mean they wanted to be called grandma, because it sounded a bit, well, old, shall we say? So they elected to be called Nana or Nanny. And I think it fits them well.
But it doesn’t sound like me.
Another friend is called Gigi by her grandchildren. I asked her how that came about, and it was actually quite simple. GG…Gorgeous Grandma! Well, she is! I like that, too, but still, I just don’t think it’s me.
When I was growing up, my mom’s mother, my Grandmom, always spoke about Granny. Granny was a distant relative I never met (maybe my grandmother’s mother or grandmother – I have no idea), but I saw an old picture of her once, and she was just that! Old! Or at least she looked old to me! (Of course, those photos from back in the early 1900’s or earlier made everyone look old!)
Then there was Granny in the Beverly Hillbillies TV show in the 60’s. She was funny, and certainly made the show what it was, but still, she was made up to look OLD as well. Irene Ryan was only 60 (younger than I am now) when she played that part, but she sure looked like she was some 15 years older, at least! Especially with those “granny glasses” that became so popular.
No, in my world, I’m NOT going to be called Granny!
I remember someone asking my own mother what Ashley was going to call her, and her simple answer….”anything she wants! She’s my granddaughter and I don’t care what she calls me.”
I always called my mother’s mother Grandmom. I don’t remember why; that was just her name as far as I was concerned. I didn’t know my father’s grandparents very well at all, and quite honestly, I don’t think I ever called them anything, because I didn’t see them much, and they weren’t like the loving, fun grandparents on my mother’s side.
Ashley always called my mother Grandmom. But to be honest, I’d never thought about it. Not at all. Even when Ashley and Chris told us we were going to be grandparents, it didn’t really hit me that I wasn’t going to just be “mom” to someone any more. A “grand” was getting ready to be added to a title.
The definition of “grand” is “majestic”, “magnificent”, and my favorite, “a term denoting the most important item of its kind.”
Hmmmm…..
Not that I’ll ever consider myself more important in my granddaughter’s life than my daughter (her mother), but that gives the term a whole new meaning.
Grand mom. To a grand daughter. Yeah. I like that. And I’m sure I’m going to have a magnificent granddaughter…the most important in the family line so far!
Just call me Grandmom! I only hope I am as good a grandmother to Rachel as the two other ladies in my family who were honored with that same title were to their granddaughters.
