What’s Wrong with Grandma and Grandpa

I’ll have a nephew ask if he can do something and respond with, “Ask your grandma or your grandpa,” only to be greeted by a blank stare. “Your Poppy? Mamaw? Maw? Papa?” My guessing game continues until I land on some word that’s familiar to the child and they run off to their grandparents.A little more than two years ago, my side of the family expanded witht the birth of my niece. My parents had much deliberation over what they wanted to be called by their new grandchild and landed on Ci-Ci and The Dude. Because my niece is a child with her own sense of right and wrong, she calls them Ci-Ci and Doo-Doo.

It’s cute and it works for everyone and my new nephew will likely call them the same things. But for me, it’s a new layer of confusion.

I now contend with labels of Ci-Ci, Doo-Doo, Mamaw, Papaw, Poppy, Nana, Pa, Gi-Gi and more. Whatever happened to grandma and grandpa?

What’s wrong with being called Grandma and Grandpa?

In 1988 there was an episode of The Cosby Show where the oldest daughter, Sondra, and her husband, Elvin, give birth to twins. The couple’s mothers, Clair Huxtable and Francine Tibideaux, decide that the word “grandmother” sounds too old. They’d prefer something more grand like “Mother: the Sequel.”

In my memory, that’s when this labelling thing went south. Grandmother and Grandfather, or, conversely, Grandma and Grandpa, don’t sound old. In fact, they sound about as grand as it gets since it is right there in the name.

And the common nomenclature comes in handy when talking with kids. I don’t look forward to the day when I give my niece some piece of furniture passed down to me or my nephew a piece of art I’ve inherited, and when they ask who it’s from, I say, “my grandma” and they look back at me with a blank face.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.