Privileged

Privilege, according to dictionary.com, is a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people. Phoenix Calida describes it like this: “Privilege simply means that under the exact same set of circumstances you’re in, life would be harder without your privilege.”

I am a woman of privilege. I am white. I am well-educated. I have adequate income to purchase what I need, take the family out to eat from time to time, and go on vacation. My husband and I own our home (technically, about 85% of our home, sharing the rest of that privilege with the bank). About the only strike against me in terms of the world’s sense of power and privilege is that I am female, not male.

In my seventh decade (how can that possibly be?) I am grateful for the privilege I have. As Roxane Gay, author of “Bad Feminist: Essays,” suggests, “You don’t necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don’t have to apologize for it. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about.” Or, as Nicole Graffeo explains, “White privilege isn’t saying we’re all rich kids with rich perfect parents spending our summers without a care in the world. On an individual scale, it is not cancelling out our everyday struggles. It doesn’t say that white people do not have problems or bad lives.”

While I could devote an entire column to the topic of privilege as it has come to be culturally understood in recent years, that’s all I’m going to say about it today. Because I want to write about a different kind of privilege, the one with a capital “P,” the kind of right and advantage that’s only available to a particular group of people: the bona fide grandmothers!

I am grateful for the privilege of family, and while I enjoy the adults and older kids in my family, I am especially blessed to have the lovely Madelyn Simone and the delightful Elizabeth Holiday in my life. We (Larry, myself, and the girls’ Aunt Becky and Unkie Dan) took the two darlings, ages seven and two, on a mini-vacation to my hometown, and because of the high beds in the hotel room, we began the night with E.H. sleeping between Madelyn and me (or is it myself?). About 3 a.m., I awoke to the touch of Elizabeth kissing and patting my cheeks, while Madelyn was positioned diagonally across the bed, legs draped across mine. After my initial irritation at being awake in a hotel room in the middle of the night, my heart overruled my mind almost immediately, shifting to a profound sense of gratitude at how privileged I am to be a grandmother. Even as Elizabeth said the dreaded word, “ba-ba,” even as I stumbled in the dark to get her a drink of water, even as I hoped I wouldn’t trip or she wouldn’t spill water in the bed, even as it took her a while to go back to sleep, the word kept coming: I am so privileged.

As we strolled along Canalside in downtown Buffalo, privileged. As the buzzing bees and the raucous seagulls crashed our impromptu lunch on the shore of the Niagara River; privileged. As nine of us crowded into a hotel room for Chinese take-out at 10 p.m.; privileged. As little hands reached for mine while walking, jumping into the pool, or drifting off to sleep; privileged.

I acknowledge the privilege. I know many grandparents who are hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from their precious grandbabies. I know of the pain of estrangement and the pain of loss. I know the ebb and flow of Ecclesiastes 3, with its promised seasons and time for everything. I am soaking up every touch, every kiss, every splash, and yes, even every middle-of-the night, “Nana, ba-ba.” For as Brené Brown understands so well, “What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.” I am one grateful Nana today.