Is at a difference in the way one becomes a grandparent, biology or legally … I’m not too sure but I’m starting to think that it is.
Why else would there be special classes aimed at future or soon to be grandparents. I am a intercountry Korean adoptee so naturally my now parents attended adoption education courses, but at the time of my birth in the middle 80s there were few if none for prospective grandparents.
I wonder what they discuss at these classes the grandparents I mean, do they have to talk about ethnicity and race … ? I’m guessing that they do. Although I love my grandma there are times, I have to admit that she really manages to upset and irritate me. I don’t think she’s aware of it , or would understand my feelings if I tried to tell her how upset she makes me. My grandma adamantly refuses to acknowledge my new name (which deserves an entry all to itself) she seems oblivious or ignorant to the fact that I’m not ethnically her granddaughter yet she manages to present rather contradictory sides of herself whenever she mentions my birth family; my first family.
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| Picture Shaula Haitner via PikiWiki on the 9th of August |
She seems to think and I’m quite convinced that the adoption process and approval somehow managed to erase my ethnical belonging because to her I’m as Swedish as can be as she once told me. For obvious reasons such a statement doesn’t exactly make me happy or helps to further lighten up my day. And I think you could see why it wouldn’t….
It’s true of course that I legally speaking belong to another family and even learned their ways, habits and values. However nothing can change the fact there once was other parents that looked forward to my birth … I know it might seem totally unnecessary and unexplainable at that but whenever grandma makes a statement such as the above it honestly only manages to produce a rather unwelcoming feeling of infuriation inside me. Because too me she’s not only insulting me but furthermore or more importantly she is insulting to me and my birth parents.
Maybe she can’t help to think the way she does because I and my brother are the only grandchildren on our mother’s side… So you see grandma has no other children that she can call herself a grandmother of, maybe she just doesn’t know the difference because nobody bothered to tell her. And now it may all be too late because my grandma is quite old… And grandma is the only grandparent that is still living, my dad’s parents have both passed as my grandfather did very long ago.
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