Goodnight, Grandma Walton. It`s time to make room in the rocking chair for some ”young whippersnappers,” a modern generation of grandmothers.
Judging from the growing number of high-profile grandmothers and soon-to be grandmothers-Jackie Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and Priscilla Presley, to name a few-the stereotype of the ”sweet little old lady” is being retired.
Admittedly, Grandma is the one who slips you cookies after your mother says you`ve had enough. The difference is, today you might have to reach Grandma on the car phone, in between business meetings or at the pool in her Sun Belt condominium.
As the population ages, and as modern medicine and healthy living habits extend life expectancy and ease the pains of aging, we`ll no doubt see even more of these energetic grandmothers. Though fewer and fewer resemble those heartwarming images painted by Norman Rockwell, most perpetuate the same legacy of love. Adding a new title to an already impressive resume, they are embracing their grand, mothering role with open arms.
A New York advertising executive and grandmother of eight recently found time between advertising campaigns, board meetings and magazine column deadlines to write a book of essays about her experiences. Lois Wyse lets down her youthfully coiffed, salt-and-pepper hair in ”Funny, You Don`t Look Like a Grandmother” (Crown Publishers Inc., $12.95).
”I`m not ashamed to be called `Grandma,` ” says Wyse, president and cofounder of Wyse Advertising, one of the top 100 advertising firms in the country.
”Grandmothers have exciting jobs, do charity work and they have more money to spend. They are a powerful and growing group.”
Blending funny anecdotes with quiet reflections, Wyse shares some three-dozen essays about the delight and plight of being a modern grandma. Wyse based the vignettes on personal experience and friends` observations; some are taken from ”The Way We Are,” her monthly lifestyles column in ”Good Housekeeping.”
Wyse explores the tell-tale signs of grandmotherhood (wallets stuffed full of baby pictures, well-worn charge cards) and the emotional upheavals that come with the stork (fears of growing old, fights with in-laws, losing touch with grandchildless friends.)
She vividly recalls the moment she became a grandmother five years ago.
”It opened me for yet another of life`s experiences,” she says. ”I love having all the fun that comes with having a child and none of the responsibility.”
Wyse, a onetime newspaper reporter in Cleveland, turned to advertising writing more than 30 years ago after her then-husband urged her to start a column about new products. The successful ”Wyse Buys by Lois” column led to the founding of Wyse Advertising Inc. in 1951. Today, the company has $100 million in billings, 300 employees and direct-marketing and research units.
Between business and pleasure trips, Wyse is a bit of a jetsetter-she spent Christmas in Budapest-but she says her most frequent jaunts are to her grandchildren`s homes in New York, Cincinnati and Philadelphia.
Wyse recites the names and ages of her grandchildren with unabashed pride: Stephanie, 5 (”a charmer”); Alex, 2 (”so sweet”); Max, 3 (”a dear”); Molly, 1 (”adorable”); Noah, 17 (”a young man now”); Marisa, 7
(”a smarty”); Elizabeth, 3 (”a darling”); and Sarah, 1 (”an angel”).
Typical of those in more and more modern families, Wyse`s grandchildren are part of a ”blended” family. Wyse was divorced from Marc Wyse in the
`70s, though they are still business partners. They have two children, Robert, who works in the Cleveland office of Wyse Advertising, and Katherine, a Philadelphia resident. Wyse`s second husband, theater producer Lee Guber, died unexpectedly last year.
”Lee`s legacy lives on in our grandchildren,” she says. ”He thought it was important to keep the family together and to this day we still get together at least twice a year.”
The Wyse grandchildren (Stephanie, Alex, Max and Molly) and the Guber grandchildren (Noah, Marisa, Elizabeth and Sarah) will gather for their 5th annual ”grandchildren`s weekend” at her country home this month.
”It was amazing, but all of the grandchildren became so close in just six years (of her marriage to Guber),” she says. ”It was the result of a great amount of love.”
Wyse, who lives in Manhattan, thinks it`s vital for all grandmothers to make time for frequent visits. ”I put it on my schedule just like any other important meeting,” she says, adding that ”not more than eight weeks go by” between trips.
Does she have a favorite grandchild? ”The one I`m with at the time,”
she answers diplomatically. A generous gift-giver who says ”giving doesn`t spoil children, not loving them enough does,” Wyse also receives just as lavishly.
”Most (of the gifts) are drawings or paintings, which I put up all over,” she says. ”It`s a good thing I have two houses.”
A few more meditations on the hazards of being a modern grandma, taken from Wyse`s book, ”Funny, You Don`t Look Like a Modern Grandmother,” follow. GRANDMA`S READY FOR PRIME TIME They had been together for a long time, so we teased her a lot about getting married.
”Hurry up,” I used to say, ”before the grandchildren start asking questions.”
But, after a while when you see a small, hard smile instead of a ready grin, you know the time for teasing has stopped.
Still, even though they weren`t married, they acted more married than plenty of people with nice gold bands and mortgages to match.
They gave dinner parties, went on trips and complained about each other as much as any legally married couple. Furthermore, just like the rest of us wives, she went out in search of herself each Sunday while he sat in front of the television set watching whatever sporting event the networks decided to broadcast.
And then one spring day she blew the whistle on this man who couldn`t say yes to marriage. For she was a woman who wanted to stop saying no to life.
”I`m going to leave you,” she told him one rainy day. ”It isn`t that I don`t care about you. I do love you, and I will always be your best friend. But I want to be in charge of my ife, and as long as I stay with you, I know you`ll decide what I do.”
”Where are you going?” he asked.
So she told him. She was going to visit her sister, then come back to the city and finish some work she had begun earlier in the winter. Then she had a job in Europe, another in South America. She would be traveling a good deal, but in between she`d come back.
”Why are you telling me?” he asked.
”Because,” she explained, ”I think you`d better find someone else who will take as good care of you as I have these past years. I can`t simply walk out without giving you some warning. Because I do love you, but I must have a life that is mine.”
He walked out the door and did not say another word to her.
She went to the telephone and called for her airline tickets, made her reservations and began to pack her bags.
At 5 o`clock the doorbell rang, and he stood framed in the doorway, a box of flowers in his arms. ”I want to marry you tomorrow,” he said.
And so they were married.
”Why?” I asked. ”Why, after all these years, did he want marriage?”
”Because for the first time I wasn`t afraid of what he`d say or do, and I didn`t play games with him. I didn`t threaten to leave ever before. This time I simply told him quietly and without any histrionics that we were finished. I guess when a woman doesn`t cry, it scares a man a lot more than when she rants and raves and sobs.”
”Is it different being married?” I asked.
”Not for me,” she said, ”but the strangest thing has happened with him. He is different. His feelings about me are more tender, more open. He is more caring. He really is my husband.”
”But you?” her friend persisted.
”I always knew how much I loved him. For me marriage is an extension of what I always felt. I think that for him marriage is an awakening.”
Not surprising, is it?
Though we women are always assumed to be the romantics of the world, it is oftentimes men who are romantic and women who are pragmatic.
Think about that for a minute, and then ask yourself:
How many women ever married a man because he had good legs?
A GRANDFATHER WOOS WITH MORE DOLLARS THAN SENSE
They met the way people do. Someone said to the newly widowed grandfather, ”Say hello to a longtime widowed grandmother.”
And so they began a winter of dinners and benefits and parties.
From that start he was plainly enchanted.
She was a woman who radiated star power, something that comes from within and is burnished to a high shine by the outside world.
And he was a man who radiated dollars-not all bad in a world of widows and orphans.
From the start she told him that she never would marry him. ”But I`ll give you thousands of dollars every month,” he insisted. She just laughed and laughed. ”That sounds like clamshells to me. I can`t even translate that into how many dresses it would buy.”
She wasn`t teasing; she meant every word, but she noticed that his two grown daughters seemed a touch nervous. Not to worry, she assured them. ”I promise I am not leading your father on. I have told him that I am not going to marry him, but I do like him very much, and I like both of you very much, and hope we can all be good friends.” Of course that was what happened.
What grown daughters can resist a widow who assures them she`s not after their father and all his assets?
By spring the man was tired of fun and games.
”We will get married,” he said to the widow.
”I`m afraid you didn`t listen when I said no,” she repeated.
”But I`m lonely,” he said sadly. ”I was happily married for so many years, and I like a woman in my home.”
”I cannot be that woman.”
”Then just come and spend a weekend in the guest cottage at my home,”
he insisted.
So off she went to the weekend retreat.
It was indeed a pretty little cottage on a vast and wondrous estate, and the widow settled herself comfortably.
At the end of the first day she realized she was lonely. At the end of the second day she knew she was very lonely, and at dinner the third day she told him that positively, definitely, absolutely she could not marry him.
For she had learned what she had always thought was true. She had learned that money really wasn`t enough. And she had found out that the loneliness in life is not the result of being alone; it is the result of feeling alone.
The erstwhile suitor has pledged to find himself a wife.
Our friend the widow wishes only the best for him. As for herself, she says, ”Oh, I do hope his new wife will like me, because I don`t want to lose him as a friend-it`s just that I don`t want him as a husband.”
And that is one of the great advantages of being a grandmother in the love game. You don`t have to buy what you don`t love.
