My ideal woman is someone who has grown children of her own, but no grandchildren yet. (Well, my ideal woman is Tamar, of course, but give me some latitude here).
These are the women who, at parties, or other social occasions are so aching for grandchildren that they will wholly devote to taking care of my kids.
Once that woman, however, picks up her own grandkids, she's out of the club. Understandably, she's more interested in her own than in mine.
On Yom Kippur, I was talking to a former member of my "ideal woman club" (she just had her 1st grandchild a few weeks prior) and to her husband.
"From my perspective, being a grandparent seems like one of the best jobs around," I said.
The husband responded, "you know, my mother always said, 'if I had known that being a grandparent was this much fun, I would have done it first!"
A few minutes later, after the conversation ended, I saw another friend of ours who is getting married at the end of October. I hadn't seen him for a while, knew he was dating, was thrilled to hear about the wedding, but had never met his fiancee.
"Do you know anything about her?" he asked.
After giving me some basic information about her he then said, "Oh and by the way, she's got 13 grandchildren and looks like she's in her early 40s."
My friend (who is marrying for the 2nd time) has no natural children of his own (that he knows of :-).
"Whoa. You're doing what other people dream about! You skipped the parenting stage and went right to Grandfather! Instant Grandparent."
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