My oldest grandson, Nathanial, a Marine, is getting married to a lovely young woman, Rebekah. They are both from Alaska, but he is stationed in Washington D. C. where he is doing Marine Corps jobs, as assigned. I am very proud of him knowing that he is following in his grandmother’s footsteps (also his father and grandfather, a couple uncles and a cousin, but who’s counting). I was doing pretty well as I bragged about him, tall, very physically fit, and, of course, handsome, until someone, yet to be named, said something about me being the family matriarch. What? Who? Me? I admit to being a mom, grandma, and lots of other monikers, but matriarch?
To me it means I am older than dirt, circling the drain, maybe even with one foot in the grave. I looked up its synonyms in my handy dandy thesaurus and came away with dame, matron, and dowager, none of which indicates kinder and gentler women. From time to time, trying to evoke sympathy, I have called myself the Widow Cushman, and one of my long-standing friends calls me Dame Wrinkly, which I took as joke, but maybe I ought to rethink his status as a friend.
I decided to search the Internet, because my experience says it knows everything, and, sure enough, I found a whole lot of people who had written about being a matriarch. Cool, I thought, I’ll take lessons because if I have to be the matriarch, I want to be a danged good one. One problem, the writers were all under thirty with little kids and were writing about their dowager aunts. So, they were making rules for other people when they had no working knowledge of what the heck to do. But I did find a couple comments that I found useful.
- Be a good listener and don’t give advice. This fits in pretty well with my poor hearing issues. I can smile and nod at will, pretending that I hear when in fact I don’t have a clue.
- If someone insists on talking to me, I’ll just nod say, “It’s all going to be okay,” and flutter my eyes before closing them, feigning sleep.
- Grunting is okay. It can show both approval and disapproval, and grunting will be taken as agreeing with them. It’s all good.
- A matriarch needs a consort, whatever you think that might be, kind of like George Burns to Gracie Allen. Cowboy is in training for this, and he practices regularly on his horse Slowpoke, and I’ll let you know if he ever succeeds.
A recent show called Downton Abbey elevated the role of matriarch, with one particular character who could scald the pin feathers off the young debutants and wannabes. She could do more with the word “mmm” than Churchill did in all his speeches over the battle of Britain, for instance, when one particularly snarky young female asked, “Does this make me look fat?” The matriarch replied, “Mmm.” I figure that is probably a good response to any question, after all, I am a matriarch, and don’t you think so? “Mmm.”
