I’ve been babysitting my grandchildren a lot lately as my daughter has started back to work, and preschool has yet to begin. She and the family are planning a move to a new neighborhood soon, too, so there’s lots of planning and packing that needs to be done without the children interfering.
I love grandparenting! It’s grand! I love free play with my four year old granddaughter and my two year old grandson, usually involving building or coloring. I just follow their lead and see what happens. I also love planning outings with them—the zoo, the science museum, a splash pad. Watching them interact with each other and with the new friends they make delights me. Their conversations alternately put me in awe and make me chuckle. They are almost equal in language skills, partly, I’m sure, because the toddler is a quick study of his sister.
But it’s their relationships to their bodies that has most fascinated me recently. Yes, as most children of this age, they find bodily functions hilarious and worthy of detailed discussion. That’s not what has caught my interest, though. It’s the way they are completely at ease in their bodies—jumping, dancing (hysterical!), twirling. There is absolutely no self-consciousness about how they appear. They don’t revel in the attention they receive, either. They are just unabashedly themselves, inhabiting their skin without thinking about it.
We’ve been making a habit of visiting my sister’s swimming pool on a weekly basis. Both grandchildren have made huge strides this summer with their comfort in the water. The four year old now swims underwater for short distances (goggles were the game changer), and the two year old wants to jump off the side of the pool to me on repeat. Their little bodies squirm and twist and kick so effortlessly.
On three occasions now, at the end of a pool session, I have suggested they skinny dip. The first time I introduced this idea, they looked at me with eyes like saucers after I explained the term, and exclaimed, “Can we really?” My sister’s pool is quite secluded, and my daughter, their mother, was in agreement. So I stripped them both of their bathing suits, and they jumped back in the pool, squealing “I’m naked, I’m naked” over and over. My granddaughter even told me that she felt lighter when swimming without her bathing suit. My grandson crowed about one particular body part, which I acknowledged, then ignored until he quit. I remembered that they also love running about their house bare-skinned. They seem so free and delighted with themselves.
I know we can’t continue these behaviors into later childhood, but I don’t want my grandchildren to lose the abandonment and freedom of adoring their bodies—what they can do and how they feel. When I compare their relationships to their bodies with me to mine, I am chagrinned. I admit that I often view my body as flawed—the loose skin above my knees and at my neck, my flappy upper arms, my creaking knees. It’s all normal aging, but I tend to view it with distaste.
When did that start?
Women especially are often given, and hold onto, comments about our bodies at a young age. Fortunately, I didn’t receive any of those messages from my parents, but I’m sure I absorbed societal notions of what a body should look like. As a child, I obsessed about my ears, which I thought were too protuberant. I remember being made fun of for it when I was nine years old, but I don’t know if that was the inciting incident that led to my obsession. (My mother eventually took me to a plastic surgeon for a consultation. He said I should just wear my hair long and cover my ears that way. I applaud my mom for taking me seriously and the plastic surgeon for knowing the right answer, even though I was disappointed.)
Our bodies are amazing. I am so grateful to mine for carrying me to so many places. I am in awe of they way it continues to function efficiently, even as it ages. It is only through my body that I can hear, see, touch, taste, and smell the world around me. Not that I want to embrace my body in the ways my grandchildren do and take it completely for granted. I do want to move through the world uninhibited by the limitations I, or society, place upon it.
I might even skinny dip in my sister’s pool one day (or night) soon!