Here I am cuddling my day-old grandson when suddenly I felt the collapse of time. A familiar though eerie sense of life at warp  speed. This grandson bears the same name as his father, one generation folded into the next.  And what is my role? Grandfathers are supposed to provide a legacy and hopefully a positive one. Money, if there is any, would be easy. But hardly about who I am, who I want to be in my grandson's life.I had no such thoughts when I was a new father. My thought then was that my son and I would share parallel destinies. Some of that experience informs my novel, Father ∫ Son. Being a grandfather is like being placed at the head of a table, a figurehead speaking into a future that will proceed beyond me. It's like being awarded a diploma. Or an early headstone. Life beyond age seventy has inserted a new generation into our lifespan. Living until grandchildren become adults is now the new normal. A grandfather has ascended out of his resting place and is now trotting alongside children.  How does one relate to the other?I never knew my grandfathers. One died before I was born, the other shortly after. My father's mother fashioned herself as a very old person, glued into a constant stream of soap operas on radio and television. She mostly sat, often could be caught napping, complained about dead or distant relatives, and soaked her dentures in a glass by her bedside. I know she doted on me from the time I was a baby until the moment when I looked at her quizzically as if asking, "Who are you?" We never actually had a conversation. When I was eleven she moved into an old folks home..

"Living until grandchildren become adults is now the new normal."

.Trying to fit myself into a relationship with my new grandson evokes an unfamiliar anxiety like landing on a new planet. I had some practice with three somewhat older grandchildren but they live two long plane rides away. With them I show up and then try to insert myself into a role they seem to have inadvertently assigned to me. The title of grandfather comes with a cultural format. I adjust and play along. I sometimes feel a bit lost with them. I feel I haven't been able to establish a consistent, recognizable identity. Not enough opportunity to live and adapt and acclimate within their orbit. But I continue. As they mature opportunities to achieve mutual attunement grow out of an increasing body of shared interests, shared ideas and, of course, shared experiences. One seven-year-old grandson recently took up the piano. He will probably move rapidly beyond me. But we now have the piano in common. Just one of many starts. The relationship with my sons and, now themselves parents, took a different turn when I became a grandfather. That vague concept of legacy popped up a step. Just like there is no real preparation for fatherhood there is none for grandfatherhood either. But a child, partly due to some biological bonding system, pulls parents along, tugs on them day and night, month after month, year after year. But being a grandfather I feel left at the doorstep. Invited in, always eager to move among that newly formed family. But always playing on the sideline. It was like the first time, then a four-year-old, when I entered a friend's house. It not only looked totally different,  almost alien, it even smelled different. I could not reconcile the difference between that house and my own, could not comprehend that my friend and his family actually did live there. I was even scared, almost as if my house had vanished or never existed. Each time afterward that I visited there I would take a deep breath, steel myself, and enter with eyes half-closed.As a grandfather, I step into each of my sons' homes not as a stranger or a friend, but as a new extension of their families. There is a broader implication I am sure. I look around. Nothing much has changed. But everything has. The grandchildren are there of course and suddenly I am standing with them, with all of them. At my age, in my nearly final maturity, I am once again finding my way. It is another step in growing up. And I reach up.