THE unstoppable force known as Kaye Martin has insisted I use my own writing voice again.
I have been a journalist for more than 40 years in the region and have written countless stories recording the voices of others to tell the story of their lives, their events, their opinions and their excitement over an achievement or I have recalled their voice from times past after they too have passed.
For some years, many years ago, I wrote in my own voice in a column called ‘Ramblings in which I rambled about my life in a household of six sons or ambled along about the microcosm that is life in a small rural community.
While our two eldest boys attended boarding school, our first set of twins and then our second set of twins, attended the local high school and eventually complained that it made them uncomfortable when I wrote about family adventures, and misadventures.
And so, I put my writing voice aside.
But now Kaye Martin is insisting …
Our sons provided so much story fodder for the Ramblings column, I’m not sure I can meet the challenge of a weekly column.
Yet, there are now grandchildren …
… which brings me to my life as a grandparent.
Initially, I was more than happy when our eldest broke the news that he was soon to be a dad. The problem arose when he asked whether I wanted to be called grandma, nan, gran, granny, gram-ma and so on. He has always known how to push my buttons.
I told him that none of them suited.
I told him that I was happy, ecstatic, delighted and thrilled that he was going to become a dad but I did not want to be called grandma or any combination or permutation of that name.
It would make me feel old and after all, it was all about me, I told him.
He ignored me of course and christened me ‘grandma’ around the same time as his daughter was christened.
He too at times is an immovable force – in fact all of our sons are forces to be reckoned with, in different ways.
There were days when they were all teenagers or tweenagers, that I’d think I should be pinned with a medal engraved with the words ‘I survived motherhood with my sanity intact … almost’.
Thankfully those boys turned into very likeable men of whom I’m very proud.
Now I am grandma to their children, one of whom, at 2½, has chosen a point of difference in the naming stakes and calls me ‘Anma’ – usually at the top of his voice when he first greets me, which I find delightful.
Please understand that my reluctance in the grandparent space was never about the children, I adore them, it was always about the ‘grandma’ tag.
And now, I have become accustomed to it even though I remember as a teenager looking at my grandmother, when she was much younger than I am now and thinking that I would never be that old … it was simply not going to happen.
It is fortunate that I am a writer and therefore have the power to record my own voice on paper at any age I choose it to be.
