The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men . . . and Grandmas

{Time to Read: 3 minutes} When my niece was pregnant with our first grandchild – we were thrilled beyond belief. We knew it was going to be a girl, and after the flurry of offering favorite names to the parents-to-be, we embarked on names we wanted the new baby to call us! Not satisfied with the usual grandma, grandpa, aunt so and so,  we came up with fun and clever names for ourselves that pretty much stuck.

We have old family friends whose grandchildren call their grandmother “MaMere.” Where they came up with that, we don’t know, but we all agreed that my sister, the new baby’s grandmother, should use that appellation. Being the down-to-earth and unassuming person that she is, she was uncomfortable with a name she considered pretentious, so the search continued. However, everyone starting teasing her and calling her “MaMere” even before the baby was born. After a while, she got used to it, came to like it and finally… MaMere she became.

The baby is now learning to talk. As with every child, some sounds are more difficult to pronounce than others and… you know where I’m going with this, right? “MaMere” became “MaMoo,” and after a short while, “MaMoo” became “MooMoo!” My sister, who was so concerned about the pompousness of the word “MaMere” has now been relegated to a cow. We all think this is hysterical – she most of all!

This reminds me of two wise and wonderful quotes:

1. “Man plans and God laughs.” – Jewish proverb

2. “God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.” – Isak Dinesen

In mediation, couples work together to plan a future that is different from the future they originally planned. They could not predict that they would end up in my office embarking on a new path, but keeping things open, fluid and relaxed helps adjust for the unavoidable and unknowable bumps in the road that lie before them.

My sister is a high school English teacher. One of the books she reads with her students every year is Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. The title is taken from the Robert Burns’ poem “To a Mouse,” which read: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Often go awry.” I know the irony is not lost on MooMoo.