Silly me. When I was anticipating becoming a grandmother for the first time, I thought about lots of things: Would I have to go out and buy support hose and orthopedic shoes to look the part? How rusty were my baby skills — changing diapers, installing car seats, fixing bottles, etc.?
But I obviously overlooked what is apparently the most pressing issue for new grandmothers: What is my grandchild going to call me?
Not a week goes by now when someone doesn’t ask me what my granddaughter, Edda Rose, will call me. Since she’s only four months old, I haven’t considered it an urgent matter. She doesn’t call anybody anything yet, so what’s the rush?
Evidently, however, that was the misguided, simplistic thinking of a rookie grandma.
“What’s Edda going to call you?” friends have asked.
“I don’t know – whatever she wants to, I guess,” I have answered.
“Oh no – you HAVE to decide,” one friend insisted, looking at me like a tent evangelist giving an altar call. “Whatever you do, don’t let your grandkids call you whatever they want to! I know a lady who did that and her first grandchild called her ‘Bush.’ Nobody knows why. Now all her grandkids call her that.”
I imagined Edda barking, “Hey, Bush!” to me at a restaurant, at church, at the mall … and it was disturbing.
So now the pressure is on to decide what I want Edda to call me, a decision that could apparently affect my legacy for generations to come.
I never thought about all of this before because almost everybody I grew up with simply called their grandparents “Grandma” and “Grandpa.” I don’t remember anybody being called, “Nanna,” “Fifi,” “Gram,” “Mamaw,” “Papaw,” “Meemaw,” “Bimi” “Nini” “Gramps” “Pepop,” “Granny,” “Pops” or “Ya Ya.”
My paternal grandparents were called “Mom Shouse” and “Dad Shouse,” but I never knew why and it always felt a bit uncomfortable to me, so I generally tried to avoid calling them anything.
Since I do want Edda to call me something, I suppose I need to settle this. She will be talking soon, and will likely not stop once she begins.
But here’s the bottom line: I don’t really much care what she calls me … just as long as she calls me.
Whether I’m “Gram” or “Meemaw” or even “Bush,” I just want this precious child to want to talk to me, to enjoy a rich relationship with me, and to soak up all the love I want to give her.
To some extent, I’m pretty sure that’s how God feels about us. He has many names in the Bible, formal and informal, not because He’s a “shapeshifter” with an identity crisis, but because His goal and desire is to have a personal relationship with us; each of His names expresses a different aspect of His character, and each invites us to know Him.
We are free to call God any of the names He calls Himself, but we are not free to “create” Him in our image and slap a name on Him, as some are wont to do. We have to call and come to God on His terms, and it delights Him when we do.
And if we do, here’s His promise: “He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.” – Psalm 91:15
What my granddaughter calls me doesn’t have eternal repercussions; what I call God absolutely does.