We live in the best of times, despite public turmoil. Those same technological advancements that now enable Conflict Entrepreneurs to motivate tribes to stomp upon other tribes, also allow more gratifying connections. My father never met his grandparents, my mother only her paternal grandfather, after whom I am named. My grandparents sailed across an ocean, never expecting to return, and they didn't, except for my maternal grandmother who travelled with a measure of hardship to the new sovereign State of Israel not long after its Independence to see a few surviving relatives of the Holocaust. She left my grandfather alone for weeks to do this.
I knew all four of my grandparents. They survived to my mid-childhood, lived a drive away, not so far as to require significant planning, and connected by a new superhighway that my father traveled daily as he commuted to work. We saw them often.
My children also knew their grandparents, though under much easier circumstances. Their maternal grandmother died before their birth, but my father had remarried, leaving them with four grandparents. We lived an easy drive from one set, and eventually a flight from another. We enjoyed ample income and enough protected time to enable travel. And despite accessibility, we visited them far more often than they made a trip to come to us.
Our children made my wife and me new grandparents in 2025. We navigate a different world, mostly better. College and advanced degrees, which our two children each earned, essentially train them to secure employment. There were no family businesses, though they each entered professions that distribute employment to all parts of America, unlike government, entertainment, and financial employment, which have regional centers. They settled in suitable situations, one a five-hour drive, the other a five-hour flight. American demographics now have people marrying later and starting families later. My father became a grandfather at age 61, not quite retired, nor as well off as his sons. My turn did not arrive until age 74, long retired with ample funds and discretionary time. Yet, health and local commitments limit our ability to spontaneously get in the car or arrange a five-day cross-country visit
Communications have advanced beneficially. In lieu of travel, we can watch our infants progress to toddler on WhatsApp or Zoom. It's hardly the same as holding them, but this form of remote contact remains available almost any time. As a result, my grandchildren see us with more frequency than I saw my grandparents in the 1950s, despite more distant geographic access.
My children, and now their children, have less reservation about air travel or even long road trips than my wife and I do. Each infant has flown cross-country. A five-hour drive from my son's house to mine, extended another two hours to visit his wife's sister and her family, needs some planning, but not a lot. Getting to the other set of grandparents takes nine hours by car each way. They've done it. My senior citizen view of travel has lost some of the spontaneity of my youth. Occasionally I will offer my wife an unexpected out for dinner or treat myself to a slice of pizza without planning, but most travel, even errands, imposes some preparation. Distance visiting also eliminates day trips, the most frequent format for seeing my grandparents and my children's maternal grandparents. No matter who travels, us or them, it becomes an expedition. Mostly we accommodate each other in our homes, reasonable comfort for visiting my son, more spartan in my daughter's apartment on the opposite coast, and definitely improvised when they come to us. In their cities, though, my wife and I also travel with an element of tourism, selecting a few sites we've not visited previously.
This season I had intended to travel to each of them. The car trip should have been straightforward. Pick a long weekend and go. We did. But they have activities of their own. Son with work obligations, daughter-in-law with professional obligations. The following weekend, they make the nine-hour round trip to the other grandparents. Then two more weekends when my wife has commitments. They will share Thanksgiving with us instead.
I had intended to a transcontinental trip after OLLI concludes, and still might. A few days with descendants, a few days of tourism. My own medical care needs do not yet have the predictability to make air reservations with a week's hiatus from different elements of care that folks on Medicare anticipate. So again, daughter and granddaughter come to us.
There seems a measure of justice built into our situation. When my wife and I selected an optimal place to settle and begin our family, we included parental visits in our preferences. Easier for us to get to them than for them to get to us. And that is how it played out. The distances of my kids' generation are much larger, but it still seems easier for them to visit us when they want than for us to travel to them when we want. Probably how it was always meant to be.
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