Grandma retires early to help care for her grandchild
Aryssa Garcia is living the easy life. She sleeps whenever she wants, she eats until she’s full and in between she plays with her grandma, Rose Miranda.
“It’s been done for generations and generations,” Miranda said, of grandparents helping with grandchildren. “Although people might not think it’s still done, it is.”
For Miranda, watching her grandchild is not a necessity, but a luxury.
The 7-month-old baby has two working parents, so it was inevitable that she would spend plenty of time with a baby-sitter. But her parents negotiated with Miranda to come up with an arrangement that would let the little one sleep in while her parents leave for work, without having to go out in the cold or rain to spend the day in the care of a stranger.
“I don’t have to worry about my daughter when I am at work because my mother is taking care of it,” said Deja Garcia, the little girl’s mother. “Second best thing to you is your mother.”
When Aryssa was 3 months old, her parents Deja and Armando Garcia approached Miranda about taking an early retirement from her job in quality control at Gilroy Foods to become a full time baby-sitter for her grandchild.
“It was not a sacrifice,” Miranda said. “But it was something I wasn’t thinking of or expecting.”
Miranda, who is a young grandma at 55, didn’t think she would be able to retire until at least 62 because of the high cost of medical insurance she would pay if she retired early. But her son-in-law came up with a solution.
“They are paying my medical, eye and dental insurance,” Miranda said. “It’s what they would pay for a private baby-sitter or a private nursery.”
So Miranda gets to enjoy her days with little Aryssa. The days include time reading thick-paged, hard-back baby books immune to the chewing of the teething baby as well as walks to a neighborhood park in the mornings.
“I can’t wait until she’s old enough to put in a swing,” Miranda said.
While the baby has a pretty set routine for eating, napping and playing, her grandmother let her out of that routine while Miranda’s oldest granddaughters were visiting.
“There are no rules in grandma’s house,” Miranda said, prompting smiles from Deiara and Masia Rangel, 13 and 12, who were visiting from Sacramento.
While they were young, Miranda helped their father raise them even though she was working a full time job herself. She watched them at nights while their father worked. When they were 4 and 3, their father remarried and moved to Sacramento, but they still visit their grandmother regularly sometimes on their own and sometimes with their four younger siblings.
Despite Miranda’s self-professed relaxed ways with her grandchildren, Aryssa’s father has no worries.
“Armando said to raise her the way I raised my daughter,” Miranda said.
For Miranda, a grandmother who still puts on make-up each day and keeps her light brown hair styled, that doesn’t include staying isolated at home with the baby everyday.
“Last week, we went to lunch at Shadowbrook in Capitola,” Miranda said. The baby was well-behaved in the classy restaurant located near Soquel Creek, she added.
“She’s such a good baby,” Miranda said. “She only cries when she is hungry or wants to be changed.”
With the longest strands of her short black hair pulled into a little pony tail on top of her head and wearing just a white Onesy,
Aryssa proves her grandma right when she wakes up from a nap full of smiles and giggles with no crying to be heard.
“She wakes up and she is so happy to see me,” Miranda said.
