A Grandmother's Story

by Thom

For KL

I didn't pray for daughters. I actually didn't care if I had boys or girls just as long as I had something that would reproduce and give me a granddaughter. For a granddaughter, I did pray and my prayers were answered.

You see my family, going back as far as the lineage can be traced, has a secret ritual and a right of passage that is performed between a grandmother and a granddaughter. The thing that is unique about it and that makes it a bit tricky is that it skips generations. My daughters, and I did have three, were not privileged to receive. I was, at the hands of my grandmother as she was at the hands of hers. The females in between were not.

I'm not saying that somewhere along the line that a mother who was supposed to wait for a granddaughter, didn't get anxious or over zealous or perverted and introduce a daughter to the family secret but as far as I know, it has been held sacrosanct.

We who hold the secret don't communicate with one another about it. It just isn't spoken of, so none of us has a sense of whether it's a fully vibrant phenomenon or we're the last one practicing it. It has been going on so long in our family, though, that in any given modern generation there must be tens if not hundreds or perhaps thousands of grandmothers with granddaughters that are turning over the tradition.

I didn't understand until I had become a grandmother, that is until I reached the age that I became a grandmother, why it should be grandmothers and granddaughters, not mothers to daughters. It is only in your children's children that you realize that your destiny has really been fulfilled. No, that's too pompous. That you realize that the biology that makes a family a family at all will continue. One never feels that way with ones own children until they have managed to have children. Even then, one might not feel that way with one's own children ever but at least there is promise with the grandchildren.

My granddaughter, or rather my oldest granddaughter for I have three (one from each of my daughters bless them), has recently turned nine which is the year that the tradition demands that its tenets be fulfilled. Nine is a year for a girl when she has gained enough of life to be beyond childhood peccadilloes but not yet warped by adolescent angst.

The young body is poised so nicely at that age at a precipice between the two states. Perfect of course if the hormones have not begun to pump through her veins at all. So that the chest is still flat like a boy's with small areoles and stationary nipples. So that no coarse hair has begun to grow under the arms or on the mons veneris. So that the slit is closed, concealing its folds and caves, puffy and still riding high; easily, fully visible when they are nude.

Even if the hormones have begun to surge, at that age little will have occurred. Perhaps walnuts will have formed on their chests, a bit of an odor at their bottom, neither is unpleasant to the senses and in fact adds spice to the task at hand.

I have nurtured my granddaughter to this point in our lives very carefully so that when it happened, that is when I performed my duty, it would seem a natural extension of our relationship. She wouldn't question what we were engaged in. She wouldn't run and report it to anyone. She would fully accept the solemnity of the act while enjoying its sensuality. She would accept the duties and responsibilities to be stored away and used, if luck would have it, at some future date, decades away.

I invited her mother to leave her with me at an early age. Her mother jumped at the opportunity thinking I was doing her a favor. She could recapture a little bit of the freedom that she and her husband had before kids. She didn't know it was I that was being selfish, making my duties easier for me and for the child.

The child and I would be inseparable while we were together. We would take our meals together at small tables, I would sit on the floor with her and her dollies, pretending it was high tea. We would bathe together, she sitting between my legs, leaning back on my breasts, turning over sometimes in the tub to lie on my torso while I pushed down in the deep, hot water, kiss me on the lips and suckle on my teat. There is no part of her that hasn't felt the touch of my hand, the kiss of my lips, the probing of my fingers from the beginning. We would sleep together, the child curled in my arms, head on my shoulder or chest as she fell off to sleep. Waking the next morning before her, I would caress her awake with my hands or was it explore her body in her sleep?

As I waited for my granddaughter to be dropped off for a weekend stay, I remembered my time with my grandmother at her age. My grandmother too had prepared me well with lots of sleepovers and closeness. When she told me I had become old enough to know certain things about our family and about girls and about the sensuality of the body, I knew that she was right.

When she revealed for me the mysteries of what lie inside the fleshy curtain that I carried between my legs, I absorbed it as an important lesson. When she showed me how to use my hands to experience a variety of feelings that I had only slightly experimented with myself, I was overjoyed with them. When she showed me how to give and take that pleasure with another woman, I was happy, no, more than happy, ecstatic, no that's too crass, I was pleased that the other woman had been my grandmother. When she told me that I needed to preserve these lessons in my very soul and pass them on to my granddaughter if I were blessed enough to have one, I was honored that she trusted me.

I have to admit that I didn't simply store up what I learned from my grandmother only to be brought back to the light of day when I had my own granddaughter like the family's fine silver. What I learned at the hand of my grandmother that I could do to myself and that I could do to other girls and what they might do to me, I found ways to practice over the years so that it was always fresh in my mind, on the tip of my fingers and tongue.

I first practiced on a friend. She was a little older than I and already knew some of the things I had learned but not all of them. I didn't of course reveal that I had learned these techniques, no, that's too technical, these ways of loving of being with girls, from my grandmother.

She was amazed though that I knew how to do what I knew how to do. She was amazed that I knew the names and functions of the various parts between our legs. She was amazed that I put my fingers in places on me and on her that I did, and that the feelings that resulted were as good as they were. She was the most amazed though about what I could do with my lips and my tongue and she never got enough when I practiced on her. She used to like to practice with her mouth on me too but I was always more proficient than she.

I think now it was right to keep those things fresh in my mind as I anticipated my granddaughter. Or granddaughters if the heavens were willing. As I became an adolescent, and started to babysit, I thought it important to practice on a smaller scale, what I might do to get my granddaughter prepared for her important day in the family. I invariably had to bathe or at least undress and dress my little charges. While I was doing that, it was easy enough to casually touch a part here or wash a part there a little longer than might be necessary. Children seem to like tickling games and starting one after a bath and before dressing for bed allows one quite a bit of available opportunities for touching and kissing things that you wouldn't otherwise have a chance to get at.

When I got to college, I can't tell you how pleased I was that it, it seems all colleges are this way, had institutionalized same-sex roommates. Can you imagine what opportunities I had to practice with various roommates that I had over the course of four years? And not only my roommates but at that time the entire dorm was all women! The entire dorm consisted of bedrooms and bathrooms and women. And with boys as strange as they are and with their ability to impregnate you before you really want to be, they were best avoided entirely. So lots of girls liked to satisfy certain urges with other girls and that fit my need to practice perfectly.

When I finally did decide to marry and have children in the hopes of eventually having a granddaughter, I married a guy that was wealthy, a workaholic, and totally self possessed. These traits in a man are critical if you are to have even an ounce of time to devote to things that are important to you. By now, you know what is important to me and with that kind of husband, I was able to pursue my hobbies unencumbered by his demands.

At first I found other women in similar situations to mine to practice with. I was surprised that so many woman had had college experiences like mine and didn't really want to give that up just because they were married. Their husbands, like mine, were mostly elsewhere unless they weren't in which case they were watching television. As our husbands became more and more successful and more and more self possessed until they typically died of stress related disorders, we had more and more time to be together and pleasure ourselves in ways that our husbands couldn't.

As I got older and drifted apart somewhat from my neighborhood girlfriends, maybe drifted is too passive a verb here, I actually thought I needed to keep my fingers on the pulse of the younger girls since my ultimate target was a nine year old, I sought out friends of my children who were in need of babysitters as the kids were younger or seemed inclined to affection and attention as the kids got older. There was never a lack of either of these kinds of girls for me to spend time with, keeping up my practice, in hopes of having a granddaughter some day.

And now my day has arrived or actually my granddaughter's day has arrived. And this will be only the first one. The other two granddaughters are six and four and I have been doing my homework with both of them as well. With three of them and keeping up the need to see them at least once a month, I only have one weekend to myself in any given month. Lucky for me, my husband died in that pile of over-working, over-achieving alpha males a zillion years ago leaving me independently wealthy. More importantly he left me fully alone to pursue my hobbies and my practice which amount to the same thing. I've found another grandmother that is in a similar predicament and we spend most of our free time together practicing and otherwise enjoying each other's companionship.

Ah, here comes my granddaughter now. Won't we have a lovely weekend?