Call Me Lola

A grandmother’s love, labor, and legacy

People often imagine grandmothers as soft places to land: women in kitchens, rocking chairs, and family photographs, keeping traditions alive with steady hands and patient hearts. There is truth in that image. Grandmothers have long been caretakers, storytellers, protectors, and quiet glue holding families together. But the role is larger than the stereotype. To be a grandmother is not simply to look back on life; it is to pour what life has taught you into another generation.

Today, many grandmothers live fuller, more independent lives than ever before. We are still caregivers, but we are also women with histories, ambitions, griefs, talents, and hard-won wisdom. We balance our families with the selves we built over decades. I live inside that truth. I am not only a grandmother; I am a woman who has worked, loved, endured loss, and learned that care is one of the greatest ways we leave ourselves behind.

I love being a grandmother with my whole heart. Every day, I feel grateful for the chance to love my grandchildren in a way that is both tender and intentional. Age has not diminished me; it has deepened me. I am healthier in spirit, stronger in patience, and richer in wisdom than I was when I was young. What I give my grandchildren is not only affection, but presence, steadiness, and the kind of love that tells a child, without words, You are safe. You are cherished. You belong.

I am seventy-three years old and retired eight years ago. Ironically, my life feels busier now than it did when I worked more than fifty hours a week. I once imagined retirement as a wide, open field of freedom, a season of rest where my time would belong entirely to me. In some ways, that is true. But I did not foresee how completely my days would be filled again, this time not by deadlines and meetings, but by little hands, small voices, growing minds, and the emotional labor of loving deeply. By nightfall, I am often exhausted, but it is a meaningful kind of exhaustion, the kind that comes from giving yourself to something that matters.

I am Lola to three grandchildren: Gage, Harley, and Journi. Gage, my oldest grandchild, is fifteen and lives in Ohio, more than two thousand miles away. Harley is eight, bright and growing fast, and Journi is two, still round with baby softness and wonder. Those two live close enough for me to be woven into the fabric of their everyday lives. When Gage was born, I flew to Ohio and stayed for six weeks, helping care for him and his mother. Distance changed the shape of that relationship, but not its depth. We visited several times a year and talked every weekend, holding onto each other through the ordinary miracle of consistency.

Eight years ago, when my youngest daughter, Angela, gave birth to Harley, I was sixty-five and standing at the edge of retirement. I had loved my work for nearly thirty years. My career was rooted in helping people recognize their worth, strengthen their communities, and believe in the possibility of better lives. I believed then, and still do, that kindness multiplies. If one person helps ten, and those ten help ten more, the world can be changed in quiet, lasting ways. Yet when Harley was born, I understood with sudden clarity that the child who might benefit most from all I had learned was my own granddaughter.

She was part of my legacy, flesh of my flesh, and caring for her felt less like sacrifice than like a calling. I traded the boardroom for the nursery with open hands. It had been more than forty years since I had cared for a child full time, yet the old rhythms returned to me almost immediately: feeding, rocking, soothing, watching, anticipating. But this time motherhood came back in a different form. I carried less fear and more assurance. I had already lived enough life to know that love does not have to be perfect to be powerful; it only has to be steady.

I was in the delivery room when Harley was born. Angela would not push until I arrived. I can still feel the urgency of that moment: the bright hospital lights, the strain in my daughter’s face, the nurses’ voices growing firmer as her temperature rose. They told her she had to push hard to deliver the baby safely. I leaned closely and urged her to gather every last bit of strength for one final push. Then Harley came into the world, tiny and beautiful, with dark skin and deep red lips that seemed already painted with personality. When my late husband, John, saw her, he smiled and said, “She’s going to be a beautiful girl.” He was right.

For nineteen months, I was Harley’s primary caregiver. Then life shifted with a cruelty I could not have predicted. My husband died unexpectedly, and soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down. At a time when I needed comfort most, I had to quarantine alone. As an older adult, I was especially vulnerable, and it broke my heart to be separated from my granddaughter when all I wanted was to hold her close. Then came more upheaval: fire threats, the renovation of two homes, the sale of one house, and a move into another. By the time the dust finally settled, Harley was old enough for kindergarten, and an entire season of closeness had passed.

Two years ago, Angela gave birth to another baby girl, Journi, and at seventy-one I was given what felt like a second beginning. Once again, I stood in the delivery room beside my daughter through a long, difficult labor. At one point, I leaned toward Angela’s stomach and softly told the baby it was time to come out. When Journi was finally placed on her mother’s chest, she opened her eyes and seemed to look straight at me. In that instant, I felt as though she were asking why I had called her into a world so bright, noisy, and demanding, away from the dark warmth and safety she had known. It was a fleeting thought, but one I have never forgotten.

I have been a constant in Journi’s life from the day she was born. Now two years old, she is the youngest of my three grandchildren and likely the last. This little girl has wrapped herself around my heart completely. She is sweet, spirited, observant, and impossible not to adore. She runs to me when she sees me, cries when I leave, and folds herself into my arms as if there is no safer place in the world. She kisses me, hugs me tightly, and whispers her toddler version of “I love you” into my ear. There are few sounds more precious to me than that.

When I am with Journi, I try to be fully there, not half-listening or distracted, but present in the way children deserve. We read books, invent stories, count on fingers, name shapes, point out animals, and practice letters. We sing and dance through the house. She is agile and rhythmic, full of bounce and delight. We exercise together too, doing leg raises, scissors, bicycles, bridges, and squats as if we are training partners instead of grandmother and toddler. We play hide-and-seek, and she has become surprisingly skilled at disappearing into corners I would never expect. We chase each other through the house until we are both breathless. She keeps my body moving and my spirit awake.

Our week has its own comforting rhythm. On Mondays, I drive to San Mateo to pick her up. She spends three nights and four days with me in San Francisco, and on Thursday I take her home again. During that time, we settle into a routine that feels almost sacred in its ordinariness. In the morning, I fix her a small bowl of cereal with milk, then oatmeal mixed with ground chia, flax, and hemp seeds, sweetened with monk fruit and softened with coconut milk. She follows that with the white of a hard-boiled egg and fresh fruit, especially grapes, tangerines, strawberries, and watermelon. For lunch, I make Mediterranean-style sandwiches and dip, and later she gets a sweet snack. We walk by the beach, where the ocean air rocks her to sleep in the stroller. In the evening, I draw her a bubble bath and let her splash and play before what I jokingly call Lola’s spa treatment: lotion, massage, ear cleaning, and hair drying. It may sound simple, but to me these rituals are love made visible.

Even at two years old, I try to teach her that love and responsibility belong together. She watches me cook, helps set the table, carries her dishes to the kitchen, and proudly joins in washing them. She helps sweep the floor, gathers up little bits of dirt, and insists on taking a turn with the mop. On the mornings she stays with me, she even brings me my slippers and places them on my feet before I get out of bed. These small gestures may seem ordinary, but to me they are the beginnings of character: helpfulness, attentiveness, and the habit of caring for others.

Journi brings out the child still living inside me. I laugh more when she is near. I run more, bend more, imagine more. She keeps my seventy-three-year-old body active, but she also keeps my mind quick and my heart open. Our storytelling stretches my imagination, and her curiosity challenges me to see the world freshly, simply, and with wonder. Loving her is not only something I give; it is also something I receive. She is good for my health, good for my spirit, and good for the part of me that still wants to grow.

In caring for my grandchildren, I try to show them what love looks like in daily life: in patience, in routine, in discipline, in tenderness, in stories, in food, in time freely given. I want to be a safe harbor in their lives, a place of comfort and steadiness they can always return to. More than anything, I hope the love they receive from their Lola takes root in them and grows into compassion, confidence, and generosity. If that happens, then the legacy I leave will not be measured by what I accomplished in the world, but by what I planted in the hearts of the children I love most.