Surrogate grandmothers share the love
When you take seniors isolated from family and children craving a grandparent’s devotion, wonderful things can happen.
When Diana Olsberg reveals that she is entirely alone in the city she adores, she speaks without a hint of self-pity. At 79, she is a vivacious woman and an important part of a loving family. But while her relatives, including her grandchildren, have left Sydney, Diana has remained in the same beachside block for the past 46 years.
Her apartment, where she has lived alone since her partner died two and a half years ago, is as familiar as the small shopping strip around the corner. She is especially fond of the vista from the front sunroom, where, nestled in a deep armchair, she watches life on the street below. When she moved here in the 1970s, a single mother raising two young children, negotiating the staircase to her front door was no big hurdle. But the passing decades have made getting down to immerse herself in her neighbourhood much tougher. In some ways, though, it’s the social side of ageing that has affected her more profoundly.
“I’m an independent person and I’ve always got so many things to read and to do,” says the retired academic, who spent years studying ageing and its social impacts. “But… you can become very serious, too serious, and intense when you’re alone day after day. You can talk to people on the phone, but it’s not the same.” Covid rules that left her confined to home for long periods only exacerbated this. As she says of the regular trips she would make, pre-pandemic, to visit her daughter, brother and grandchildren: “To be alone was OK when I could go to Melbourne pretty regularly or Byron Bay.”
So, in the early uncertain days of Sydney’s first lockdown two years ago, suddenly separated indefinitely from her relatives and grieving her partner, she was surprised when a neighbour messaged her one evening. Had she eaten yet? As Diana typed her reply, she had no idea that this small act of kindness would greatly enrich her life.
“It was when there was the utmost panic at the start,” recalls Shelly McElroy, who months earlier had moved into the unit below with her young family. Contact between the two households had been pleasant but minimal until that night as Shelly cooked dinner and wondered how her older neighbour was faring at this strange time. “I messaged Diana and she said, ‘I haven’t had a hot meal for days’.” Minutes later, Shelly delivered a bowl of spaghetti bolognese to her doorstep.
It would be a life-changing gesture for both homes. “We started a couple of nights a week leaving a hot meal covered in tin foil and she would pick it up. Then we started to chat from the back door,” says Irish-born Shelly. When restrictions eased, she invited her neighbour to dine inside with the young family, who have no relatives in Australia.
At first Diana was hesitant about her ability to engage with pre-schoolers. “When my children were little I was working two jobs,” she says. “I never had time to be with young children.” But the occasional shared shepherd’s pie soon led to games and bedtime stories, and what began as a neighbourly gesture blossomed, entirely unexpectedly, into something much richer. While neither party was looking to replace their own geographically distant families, they found surrogates inside their apartment block. Shelly’s children, Alfie and Evie-Rose, suddenly had an adopted Australian grandmother living at their doorstep, a joyous older influence who played with them and sometimes lavished them with treats. And Diana, while still living alone, was not lonely. “She’s just a part of the family. We all adore her. But especially Evie-Rose – she actually calls her Nana,” says Shelly. “She’s their grandmother here.” Diana now has a confirmed seat at the family’s dinner table several nights a week, bookended by Lego sessions and regular rounds of Rummy tiles. “We don’t have family by blood line,” says Shelly, “but we have kind of created this new family.”
While age and restricted transport means that their time together is mostly at home, that, too, has produced some beautiful moments. For one of her locked-down birthdays, Alfie presented his adopted Australian grandmother with a home-made banana cake, an unexpected gift that brought Diana to tears. “She was so overwhelmed. It just meant the world to her,” says Shelly. “At that point she hadn’t seen anyone – family or friends – for such a long time.” And when Alfie turned six recently, Diana joined the clan downstairs for cake and candles (“just the family”).
“It’s utter joy,” she declares of her newfound surrogate brood, who have become as important a part of her daily happiness as she has of theirs. “They don’t replace my family, who I love – my daughter rings me every morning – but I am loved. I am cared for. And they support me in whatever way they can in terms of companionship and affection.”
It used to take a village to raise a child. But distance, a pandemic, voluntary and involuntary childlessness and family breakdowns are just some of the reasons it’s often reduced to a household. “A lot of people nowadays move away from their families and they might be a little bit socially isolated. And the same for the older people whose children move away or they don’t want children, or they become grandparents very late,” says Cate Kloos, who grew up in Germany surrounded by an extended family. Raising her own children in faraway Sydney, she wanted them to experience the joy and comfort that can come from close intergenerational relationships. So 10 years ago she established Find a Grandparent, an online service that connects old and young, based not on blood but a desire to be involved in one another’s lives.
“It’s a bit like a dating website,” she laughs of her unlikely but successful venture, which has linked countless non-biological generations over the past decade. Families and aspiring surrogate grandparents – some of whom have no grandchildren in their lives, others wanting to extend their brood – upload photos and blurbs, listing their interests and location, and suitable parties then arrange to meet. Connections are not always immediate; most members meet several potential matches before they “commit”, says Kloos. But those relationships that endure can be inspiring.
“I found my own ‘grandchildren’,” enthuses Norma, a divorced mother of two who had long envisaged herself as a grandparent. When this did not happen she decided to be proactive, and signed on to Kloos’s website. Six years ago, Jane, an engineer and single mother from the opposite side of Melbourne, responded to her ad. (Neither woman wants her surname published.)
“I was feeling that our lives were bereft of elderly company. My mum was looking after my dad, who was 14 years older,” says Jane, 47, mother to 11-year-old Lainey. Although she is one of eight siblings, Jane grew up in Melbourne with limited connections to older relatives. Her father’s family was in Sydney and her mother’s in England. “Extended family [gatherings] were really a once a year thing for me,” she says.
For her daughter, she wanted a much more regular and involved relationship. “I realise the value of having someone to guide you in your life or to give you those pearls of wisdom that you can’t get from the internet.” But with her own parents (who have since died) then largely unavailable, it was to the internet that she turned to find that person. Norma’s listed interests – nature, conservation, gardening and music – appealed to Jane and they met with Lainey for the first time in a park. Soon they were gathering regularly and Norma was attending Lainey’s birthdays and grandparents’ day at school “with the other grandparents”.
Like many grandparents, Norma boasts proudly and often about Lainey’s talents: she is artistic, clever, and a superlative creator of birthday cards. But it was during the city’s multiple recent lockdowns that their relationship revealed perhaps its greatest strength.
Love in the time of Covid can be complex. Distance has been as big an impediment as the protracted lack of human embrace, especially for those like Norma who live alone. And yet one of her greatest locked-down days emerged on what she had expected to be one of her worst. With curfews and movement severely restricted, she was not anticipating company when she turned 76. “I couldn’t have had a birthday [gathering] anyway, and who would I have invited?” While they had sometimes emailed or phoned, her surrogate family lived too far away for a visit, under the city’s travel restrictions, and she missed being hugged by Lainey. “It was a gap in my life.”
So when, from the other side of the city, Jane and Lainey arrived at her doorstep on the eve of her birthday bearing pizza and cake, able to travel courtesy of a doctor-issued carer’s letter, Norma was incredulous. “I couldn’t believe it. There they were,” she says, still chuffed 18 months on. “That was just something absolutely out of the box.” And when Norma was finally able to take a train and spend Mother’s Day with them, “I felt like I had joined the world”.
Found on the internet and forged over time, their unlikely relationship has provided a bounty of benefits. “It makes me feel a better parent to have her in my life: as a sounding board, as someone who listens and takes an interest and supports me emotionally, and which supports Lainey indirectly,” says Jane. For Norma, there is a new dimension to life in her later years. “There’s just that feeling that you’ve got an investment in the future,” she says. “If you have no grandchildren, that would be like the end of the line. You would live your own life but you would have nobody to share the future with. And in a way they’re sharing the future with me.”
They might be at different ends of the age spectrum, but when young and old connect it can be deeply life-enhancing. From warding off social isolation to potentially delaying institutionalisation, there is even evidence to suggest that when children connect to older people at a younger age they are much less likely to be delinquent, says Emeritus Professor Anneke Fitzgerald of the Australian Institute for Intergenerational Practice.
But it’s at the most basic level that intergenerational connections can benefit both sides, because of the sense of fulfilment they can induce. “Covid has shown us how tenuous and perilous many things are, and I think the more layers of security you can give a child, the better,” says retired paediatrician and former Senior Australian of the Year, Sue Packer, a grandmother of six. “Having an extra person who is genuinely interested in your babies and what they’re doing and can share delight… it can have a profound effect.”
For Diana Olsberg, that gift continues to give. Last year, with plenty of love to distribute, she appeared on the ABC-TV series Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds. As one of several older participants living independently, every day for several weeks she attended a kindergarten where she bonded with pre-schooler Maximilian Jong.
Maximilian, who is now six, has grandparents but they live in Malaysia and he has been unable to see them during Covid. Long after filming ended, he still catches up with Diana every few weeks, at a park or at his favourite cafe, and is planning to soon lead her on an “expedition” to another suburb, complete with packed lunch, to Diana’s delight. “Him telling me about it, how can I not become involved in the expedition? I’ve never planned an expedition but suddenly I find myself thinking, ‘What will we need?’”
With her adored biological grandchildren still in close contact but living far away, on the cusp of 80 Diana has found a way to experience joy beyond the borders of a traditional family. “How lucky am I?” she beams as she counts her unexpected blessings. “I just have a sense of belonging and being loved… it’s an epiphany.” And it’s come with an important lesson. “I don’t think kin is necessary for people to have close relationships,” she says. “You can love anyone who loves you.”
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