Early this summer, Helen and I traveled to Chicago for a memorial service for my maternal grandfather, who died this year at a well-ripened 96. Even as the family mourned the passing of its patriarch, we marveled at the durability and independence of a man who reached nearly a century with both his intellect and his driver’s license completely intact.

         Ned and Helen both cried a little when I told them of Grandpa Charlie’s death, although they’d only met him a couple times. On each occasion they’d been too tongue-tied and Grandpa too deaf for much conversation to have passed between them. Still, their sense of loss was real, if fleeting. “It’s sad because he was my oldest relative and that made him special,” Ned explained tearfully. I suspect there might have been a bit more to it, though, for a boy who loves his own grandparents with such fierce passion. I’ll never forget him at two, running out to greet my mom as she arrived for one of her monthly visits. “Grandma Watson, Grandma Watson, hello!” he called joyously, entirely naked but for the heart on his sleeve. “Hello and I love you, Grandma Watson!” 

         While writing Grandpa’s eulogy my older brother called to mine a few of my memories of both Charlie and our grandmother, who had died many years before. My most lasting recollection of either is probably Grandma’s reliable willingness to set aside her knitting for a game of cards. Some of the most contented hours of my childhood were spent across the table from her, tracking the flash of her red-enameled fingernails as we slapped and shuffled through a well-worn deck. As a kid I thought it was something of a miracle that she would always agree to a game. After all, as any parent will tell you, one of the cardinal rules of adulthood is that you must answer “maybe later” to almost every request to play. 

         Maybe because I thought that my grandmother was an exception, I’ve been a little taken aback by how much grandbabies have transformed my mother. Like most single working moms in the 1970s, her capacity for Matchbox races and recipe swaps over the Easy Bake Oven was pretty much nil when we were growing up. Now, though, as a near-retiree with plenty of disposable income and time on her hands, she is able to muster some serious joi de vivre for Ned, Helen, and their cousins.

         Her engagement goes beyond a few rounds of rummy and a free hand with the candy. She stages theatrical voice performances of Ned’s Captain Underpants books, cracking the pages of each Flip-O-Rama with unapologetic glee. She spends hours as the pony, the kitty, or the poor orphaned girl in Helen’s serial games of make-believe. She plays the starring role in something called Tormenting Grandma, which involves diagnosing and treating a progressively loonier set of faux maladies using a wide variety of props. And when the kids sit down to watch some favorite movie for the 18th time, she actually joins them, completely forgetting that television is supposed to be a substitute for adult care rather than an opportunity to deliver more of it. 

         During her visits, as I dash from one neglected task to another, I’ve sometimes had the guilty realization that she plays more with Ned and Helen in a weekend than I do in an entire month. Recently she kept house for me as I recovered from several broken bones, and it was almost a relief to see that when faced with the domestic duties that are my bread and butter, she temporarily reverted to the familiar, no-nonsense woman from my childhood.

         Years after I played a final hand of cards with Grandma, as I watch my own little moths flit to my mom’s generous flame, it occurs to me that the some of us begin drawing retirement benefits when we’re still just kids. In the past, many grandparents had a large role in the day-to-day rearing of a family’s children. While some still do, more people now enter the final third of their lives with the time and capacity to forge joyful, playful relationships with their grandchildren. Freed from the need to impose discipline or advance the domestic agenda, they are able to build an enchanted, sweet-strewn bridge across the generational divide.  Bypassing the parents who form their common link, it leads kids and grandparents alike to a place where unconditional love and mutual admiration are the order of the day.

         I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever have the chance to find out what that’s like. After all, by the time my kids begin to think about procreating the world will have another two billion people, all competing for the same pool of dwindling resources. Throw in the downward trend in birth rates in developed countries, and it seems that mine could be one of the last generations for whom reproduction is a given. “Mom, wouldn’t you be sad if I didn’t have babies?” Helen recently asked, in one of those preternatural moments where a kid’s offhand question pierces, sharp and true, into a matter of deepest essence. I don’t even remember exactly how I responded. But, while it’s hard to parse the selfish reasons from the others, the answer is already an aching, hopeful, emphatic yes.