But, soon enough, she figured she needed to move on. “I knew I had gotten through it before,” she says. “I’m not going to live my life being sad, and there are people out there who want relationships with people like me.” That’s when she found Surrogate Grandparents USA.
Karen lurked on the group for six months before deciding to post a message. “I’d love a mother/daughter relationship, and we are hoping for grandkids,” she wrote. “We have a goat farm … so lots of fun for kids.” The premise didn’t feel so strange to Karen. As a girl, she’d been taken under the wing of her childless next-door neighbors. They took her to a lakeside cabin each summer and bought her presents—a bike, jewelry, glass animals. When they died, Karen inherited the majority of their estate. So why couldn’t something similar happen again? Karen added a selfie to her Facebook post, along with a photo of her and the goats. Ten women responded.
One was Michelle. Michelle’s sisters had recommended the group to her—their mother had died six years earlier, and Michelle didn’t have family nearby. She longed for someone to watch her boys’ sports games or take them out to dinner. For a few years, she had watched as Facebook posts flooded in. Nobody was ever located nearby. Until Karen.
Connecting was, Karen says, “almost like online dating.” They DM’d first, before progressing to texting, calling, and finally arranging to meet up IRL. The group’s moderators encourage people to vet prospective surrogates. Michelle didn’t do that, though she did browse Karen’s social media. It was, needless to say, goat-heavy.
They met at a Panera Bread for lunch. Michelle was eager for Karen to like her—the stakes felt high. “I literally had pink eye at the time,” Michelle says, “and I was like, ‘I’m not this ugly, I promise.’” With the holidays on the horizon, they felt the absence of their loved ones. “We both cried at some point,” Michelle says.
Biological families often have a sense of obligation to spend time together, as well as a lifetime of shared experiences. Not so with surrogate grandparents and their surrogate adult children, who need to become actual friends. Karen and Michelle bonded over their loss and their shared faith as Christians but didn’t involve the boys until they were mutually serious about pursuing the connection. It, indeed, became serious. Karen’s pink coffee mug? A Mother’s Day gift from Michelle.
After introductions, Karen, Michelle, and I suggest moving outside. The kids complain about the bugs that hum up from Karen’s lawn. “I’m not an outside person,” announces the 9-year-old, who wears a shirt with bearded dragons on it. Karen had warned me that these “city kids” are a little less rough-and-tumble than some of her other surrogate grandchildren. I suspect the boys are being dramatic.
Michelle says that her sisters, who live far away, would also benefit from surrogate grandparents like Karen and Dave, and she hopes they find their own matches. (As she tells me this, I swipe a mosquito off my arm.) Michelle and Dave have connected over their love of Naked and Afraid, and Karen and Dave watch the boys’ soccer games. (I swat a blood sucker from a sliver of bare ankle.) They all celebrated one of the boys’ birthdays recently with a trip to a malt shop, where they split two family-size portions of fries. (I slap a monstrous bug as it lands on my forehead. Listen to the children, I note, for they are wise.) I can tell there’s a real relationship developing between Karen and this family. When we go back inside, Karen hands the brothers a basket of soap samples. “There’s watermelon this time,” she says, and the 6-year-old squeals. That’s the parting ritual, it seems. Michelle and her family say their goodbyes and head out.
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