I slid my slender body into a cardboard box. Four-year-old grandson uttered, "Knock, knock Mr. Storeman. I want to buy a pizza." Never mind that I wasn’t a man – I was playing store and we were taking turns with orders and exchanging pretend coins. I popped up my head. "Anything else sir?" Soon it was his turn to climb into the three-sided carton and scrunch down until I tapped on the brown side and said "Knock, knock, Mr. Storeman."

Circular soap bubbles spewed from the “magic wand” and I tried to catch them as two-year- old granddaughter waved the plastic holder. I liked the sticky feeling as my face caught a few and my fingers reached to touch them. I must have appeared to be chasing butterflies, and giggled along with the child.

"Why does wood float and the tiny pebble just sink to the bottom?"

Another grandchild and I walked along the Erie Canal occasionally scattering stale bread crumbs to ducks in the water. Later we took a trail where birds actually settled on our open palms if we were very quiet and had bird seed in an outstretched hand.

There were snow figures to be created, finger paints to be spread on paper, mixing bowls to be readied for baking cakes and I sat on the floor also sloshing ingredients. There were sports to be played, books read aloud and talked about, introducing grandchildren to the escape of live theater, piano duets, and listening without being judgmental.

In all these past 25 years of being a grandparent, I’ve kept my children’s guidelines for their offspring, have never been the “candy” person, and only bought one piece of clothing. For first grandchild I bought an outfit similar to one his uncle had worn as a tot; my daughter disliked the style, color, just about everything and said it was not her taste. Since I don’t even like shopping for myself, I was actually glad I never have played the clothes-buying role as a grandparent.

Twenty-five years, so far. I’m no longer nimble enough to climb into an open carton, and lying on the grass with a small one explaining why clouds move would not be a problem other than getting up and down to that position isn’t easy with arthritis. Mixing bowls are no longer on the floor for the same reason. I can still play golf, feed ducks – yet the book discussions are cerebral, and art forms are my pointing out architecture of rooftops or standing before a painting in a museum and speaking of brush strokes or infusing light into an oil way before electricity provided illumination.

May 2013. "Knock, knock, Mr. Storeman" will receive his Doctor of Medicine degree, and then wed. "Grandma," he spoke in the high pitched voice at age six, and I had a tiny cassette rolling to capture his sounds, "when I grow up I’m going to be a doctor, just like Grandpa." I gave him that tape when he entered medical school.

"Let me read you the poems I wrote." Grandchild number two has a degree in behavioral neuroscience and is a published author. We’d sat at the piano and played duets, she painted pictures that still improve walls in my house, and copper horse statues from my childhood remain on her girlhood dresser in my daughter’s home.

“Making snowladies” grandchild teaches; her brother two years younger is a religious teacher.

The inquisitive “why wood floats” is halfway through undergraduate school with expectations of being a CPA, as his father. But these are merely labels and not what really makes one a caring, selfless person; our society emphasizes labels as accomplishments. These offspring of my children have grown to know I continue to allow the child in myself to be nourished, and our lives are not defined by what we do but rather by who we are.

An online article in The New York Times "So Eager for Grandchildren, They’re Paying the Egg-Freezing Clinic,” by Elissa Gootman, May 13, 2012, spoke of want-to-be-grandparents spending upwards of $18,000 to freeze the reproductive eggs of their adult, unmarried daughters.

Is this putting pressure on daughters? Is this silently saying the daughter has little value on her own as the mother sees the offspring as a reproductive machine that hasn’t yet “given” a newborn? Do the parents that pay for this procedure want to insure that genetic eggs are available as the daughter ages and are offering a “gift” or guilt for not having had a child sooner?

Is the daughter somehow indebted to her parents for accepting the money to freeze eggs and also feel compelled to actually use the frozen ova? This article was not about illness which made the freezing process a tool for potential babies but about a possible ego trip for getting the title grandparent.

I read the article with questions and no comfortable opinion as I don’t know whether or not I find the concept acceptable. I wonder if a husband could be totally out of the equation as frozen eggs can be fertilized without the joining of personalities, companionship, and such, and the term single mother has little stigma in the 21st century. Would I have these thoughts had I not been given 15 healthy, normal, grandchildren from my three offspring?

My husband and I started as “one” and our children were on loan until they grew up and married, and then we were one again. Our daily lives are still as a couple, and our grandchildren are our children’s responsibility. The life enrichment with the grandchildren is mutual but they, too, will move into a different role as they begin their own families. The circle of devotion my mate and I have to one another is a constant.

Pieces of that Times article make me wonder if some daughters’ parents have so little in their own lives that having a grandchild, at any expense, fills only the parents’ void; if the parents had worked at renewing the love and interest in one another first felt at their own wedding, might the definition “grandparent” not be so powerful? For me, I see genetic connections, and I feel the handed-down-philosophy, and I want to perpetuate bits and pieces of my deceased parents as I quietly show-by-doing some of the values they instilled in me. The Times article seemed only to open another label, not who we quietly are inside ourselves, and grandparent seems to be a social-status word.

Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & soft-cover book anthologies. Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including 12 different divisions of The Smithsonian.