Hitting a nerve

A recent post on another blog hit a teeny weeny nerve with me. It was about being alone with children without grand-parental support. (You know who you are.)

It made me sad. I have a mother who is very much alive and she really isn't very interested in my children, unless it is to tell me what I shouldn't be doing - like home education. My mother works in education - can you see how much fun our conversations are?!? I also have a father who is very much alive at the moment, but who seems hell bent on pickling himself in alcohol. We don't mind him so much though, as he just lets us get on with it and with my step mother, occasionally (twice a year) takes EB over night.

I am a product of a broken home - now, before you hand me a hanky, it really isn't that sad. My mother walked out when I was nine, leaving me and one sister with a slightly drunken father. It took him a while to realise she wasn't there, but when he did, he wasn't best pleased as you can imagine. He was lovely to me and my sister in a "do-what-ever-the-hell-you-want" kind of way, but then he met and married my stepmother and produced more offspring and there the fun ended. My mother did much the same. So there is me and my sister, the rather embarrassing end products of an unhappy marriage. Sister did the sensible thing and got as far away as possible from them as soon as she was able.

Now, I would never want to swap places with my other much younger brother and three sisters, they have much more pressure heaped on them by their parents than I ever did, every one was pleased and mildly surprised that I survived, never mind actually went on to have a life that I am rather happy with. It is just some times, not very often, but just occasionally, I would like to have parents that behave like proper grandparents, and did grandparenty things, like notice the bags under my eyes and took the kids for an hour or two.

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that neither of my parents could have functioned without their own parents, who pretty much carried them through their messy divorce and gave them copious amounts of time, money and love to see them and us through it. Their number is dwindling now, and I am down to only one Granny. I dread her departing this world, as she is like a one woman fan club of me and my clan. In her eyes, we can do no wrong, and all of my children are super talented and super wonderful. She embodies every thing that a Granny should be and I love her very much. She is past babysitting (I once left my daughter with her and terrified OD by making her repeat over and over what she should do if Nana collapsed.)

I just don't understand how, with this shining beacon of wonder-grannyness, my own mother has managed to by-pass the opportunity. Oh well, her loss.