On Disagreements with Grandchildren

Let me get this straight at the outset

The following piece is one in a series of letters to my now-newborn granddaughter.

Dear Leila,

I don’t understand you.

I mean that literally. Right now, when you lack consciousness about anything other than your most basic bodily functions (if those), the fact remains that there are all kinds of things I don’t perceive about your life. Some are things that your parents, and even some of your other grandparents, do understand. And others are a mystery to us all.

Later, you will exhibit behaviors that will also be incomprehensible to me. Some of these will be obvious enough; I have never been a girl, for example. Other forms of incomprehension will be Grampa-Jim specific. I will say and think things like “I don’t understand why she ______ .” Sometimes this will be in the form of a query that someone, like another adult who knows you, will say, “That’s because she ______.” Other times may take the form of bafflement, even exasperation: “I don’t understand why she does that,” as in, “Why does she do that?” As in, “I don’t like that.”

Most of the time, when someone says “I don’t know why she does that,” it signals disagreement, but it’s more of a kind of rhetorical question where one doesn’t actually expect (or even want) an answer. But there are times when such a comment reflects something deeper, an actual disagreement connoting something more fundamental about the ways two people are living their lives. I reckon that will happen, too.

I feel like I need to state this explicitly because I’ve already had a lot to say to you, and your current inability to respond can lead me to presume too much—not simply that you will always comprehend what I’m saying, but that you will always agree with what I do. How you react and what you do, if anything, will be your business. But for now, the point here is to acknowledge to you, and remind myself, that while I’m inevitably taking some things for granted in this one-sided conversation we’re having—some things consciously, others not—I recognize your personhood beyond the limits of my imagination.

Perhaps you will have views I regard as misguided. Or simply wrong. Wrong in ways that may hurt others, or, just as likely, ways I think will hurt you. Maybe I’ll say so; probably I won’t. Maybe you’ll know; maybe you’ll won’t. (Maybe your parents will explain me to you; maybe I’ll endorse that explanation, assuming I hear it.) One thing I really do think will be true in any case: when it comes to ideas or agreements, I’m likely to be harmless. You will have to reckon with your parents because they’re your parents, and while I happen to think you’ve drawn a pretty good hand from the deck of life, there will be conflicts with them that you will have to live with in one way or another.

I, however, am at a fairly safe remove: you don’t have to care about me. I may end up causing some problems for your parents—God willing, one of the things I hope you will life to fret about is the burden your old age will cause your children—but insofar as this will affect you emotionally, it will be at one remove.

But whether or not you care about me, I will always care about you. Whether you’re a source of unalloyed joy in my life, as you are now, or whether you’re not. Because there are some things that are bigger than agreement or disagreement; because there are some things that are bigger than choice. That, for better and worse, is what I understand. I hope you will, too.