What Do You Call Your Grandma?

When I was younger and my mom’s mom was still alive, we called her…

Sitto. Pronounced “sit-to”, it’s apparently a Lebanese word for grandma (though I’ve heard various other Arabic and Lebanese names for it over the years), and we called my grandpa on my mom’s side Jiddo (jid-do). I loved my Sitto and Jiddo, who I only got to see once or twice a year at most, when we would make the 17 hour drive to upstate New York every Christmas to spend it with my mom’s family.

Those are some of the happiest times of my childhood: getting to see all of my loud, crazy aunts and uncles, my cousins who were like my best friends even though we only saw each other once a year, and playing in the six feet of snow, wishing the Christmas season would last forever and we didn’t have to come home to Tennessee. It was such a magical place to me, filled with family, food, and so. much. snow. (something we rarely get in TN).

She was lovely, and kind, and loved us all very, very much, but my Sitto wasn’t warm and cuddly like a lot of grandmas are. She was strict and had no problem yelling if you did something wrong, but she also got up before everyone else to peel oranges every morning, and her peachy-soft cheeks always smelled like orange peels. She died when I was 13, but I have only fond memories of her. Her real name was Shea (pronounced she-ah), but she’ll always be Sitto to me.

As my mom has been spending more time around the kiddos lately since we’ve eased up a bit on social distancing (she takes social distancing as seriously as we do), we decided to let the kiddos call her Sitto as well. They call their grandma “nana” and they call PJ’s mom “Mamaw Lori”, so it felt right for our kiddos to call my mom Sitto. My mom has never liked the idea of grandkids for some reason. Isn’t that crazy? She’s always said she loves her kids too much and doesn’t have a want or desire for any other kids in her life. For so long it was just us and her after my dad left when I was 5, so that was all we knew.

My mom was distant towards the kiddos for the first year they were with us. She wasn’t very affectionate, didn’t ask to babysit them, and didn’t allow herself to get emotionally attached to them. She was never sure how long they were going to be with us, so she kept her guard up. We had many discussions about that and I told her how important it was to PJ and I that she developed some sort of relationship with them. A year and many talks later, things have started to change. In the last few months she has grown closer to the kiddos and she is finally coming around to the idea of being a “grandma” in a way. She’s even babysat them a few times when I’ve had to run to the store while PJ is working on the new flip house or if we had to shoot a work thing. They love her, and she loves them.

And so far, she is the perfect Sitto.