Intergenerational ties across borders: Grandparenting narratives by expatriate retirees in Mexico

Journal of Aging Studies 23 (2009) 178–187

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Journal of Aging Studies j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / j a g i n g

Intergenerational ties across borders: Grandparenting narratives by expatriate retirees in Mexico Stephen P. Banks ⁎ Department of Psychology and Communication Studies, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844-3043, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 16 February 2007 Received in revised form 8 October 2007 Accepted 7 November 2007

a b s t r a c t A thematic narrative analysis was applied to transcripts and notes derived from depth interviews with 46 expatriate retirees living at the Lake Chapala Riviera in Jalisco, Mexico. The analysis generated seven themes about grandparenting and relationships with geographically distant grandchildren. Five positive themes identified were a) attachment to and love for grandchildren, b) geographic distance has benefits, c) communication technologies mitigate the separation, d) the retirement migration decision is reversible, and e) children and grandchildren are likely to relocate. Two negative themes were a) diminishment of the relationship because of loss of common interests and b) a total rupture of the relationship. Also revealed is a suggestion that the presence of great-grandchildren reduces the relevance of the grandparent–grandchild relationship. The findings of the narrative analysis are consolidated into an analytically constructed master-proposition that relates the findings more theoretically to identities of expatriate grandparent retirees. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction

SB

Where both of them love it here?

Shortly after beginning my ethnographic study of the expatriate retirement colony at Lake Chapala, Mexico in 2002, I encountered a logic commonly expressed by expatriates when talking about people who moved back to their places of origin. Among the topics I routinely raised with the Canadian and U.S. retirees was the question about what sorts of people do not make a successful transition to expatriate living and why they return to their place of origin north of the border. Almost invariably interviewees gave accounts along the line of the following statement, made by retired aerospace engineer Bob Schneider1:

BS

Yuh.

SB

Ah, so there's almost always some difference in the degree of enthusiasm?

BS

Usually 's if the woman doesn't like it it 's 'cause she needs to be needed back home by her children and grandchildren.

SB

Aha.

BS

If the man doesn't like it it's because he hasn't retired yet.

BS

Tends to be, don't want to say a rarity but 's very unusual where both of a couple love it down here.

⁎ Tel.: +1 208 885 7796; fax: +1 208 885 7710. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 Transcription notations have been simplified for ease of reading. Conventions used here are as follows: Latch brackets ([ ]) indicates overlapping speech; equal sign (=) indicates no hesitation in the flow of talk; text in brackets ([laughs]) indicates transcriber comment; elipsis (…) indicates missing word(s); underscoring (really good) indicates vocal emphasis. Names and other identifying information have been masked to protect participants' confidentiality. 0890-4065/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jaging.2007.11.004

A more succinct expression of the same reasoning was told by Chipper Walker, a retired law enforcement official from Alabama: CW

The women go back because they're married to their grandkids. It's the grandkid thing. The husbands go back because they're still married to their jobs.

The frequent reoccurrence of accounts about “the grandkid thing” during the first period of field work at Lake Chapala

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suggested that relationships with grandchildren must be a powerfully influential factor in expatriate retiree grandparents' identity work and adjustment to life in Mexico. The gendered way these accounts were articulated also indicated that these narratives might be reflecting an influence that is differentially distributed by gender of grandparent, in keeping with other research on the gendered closeness of grandparent–grandchild relationships (e.g., Chan & Elder, 2000; Kennedy, 1992; Silverstein, Giarrusso & Bengston, 2003). Those observations prompted me to focus a major segment of subsequent depth interviews on ties with people at or near the expatriates' places of origin, including a special concern for connections with children and grandchildren. My long-term project in this setting has been to collect and analyze identity narratives of Americans and Canadians who have undertaken the dual life transitions of retirement from full-time employment and relocation to a distinctively different national culture (see — 2004; 2005). Among the central considerations that bear on the retirement migration decision is the influences that geographical separation might have on key relationships (Longino, 1995). Expatriate retirees not only are separated by distance from their former places and persons, as is the case for all retirees who migrate; they also are required to adjust to living in a new culture. For North Americans residing in Mexico this transition usually means entering a new set of domestic, commercial and legal relationships, with a requirement for negotiating everyday public transactions in a new language and adjusting to new housing, dietary, sanitation and aesthetic conditions (King, Warnes & Williams, 2000; O'Reilly, 2000). For this reason, expatriates' methods for managing relationships with persons in countries of origin and their views on the consequences of the geographic separation can contribute to understanding of important personal relationships. Most of the retirees participating in my Lake Chapala project are grandparents. A central relationship for grandparents, perhaps second in importance only to ties with their children, are ties with grandchildren (Anderson, Harwood, & Hummert, 2005; Harwood, 2004; Hayslip Jr., Henderson, & Shore, 2003; Reitzes & Mutran, 2002). Anderson, Harwood, and Hummert, for example, point out that grandparenting is “a source of pride for grandparents” and promotes a youthful attitude (2005, p. 272). Folwell and Grant (2006) identify the strong but dynamic emotional bonds between grandparents and grandchildren throughout the lifespan. In a similar vein, Cai, Giles, and Noels (1998) found that grandparents' mental health is influenced by the quality of the Gp–Gc relationship. At the same time, researchers conclude that distance separating grandparents and their grandchildren is a predominantly negative factor in the relationship (Harwood & Lin, 2000; Jolly et al., 1996; Mueller, Wilhelm, & Elder, Jr., 2002; Reitzes & Mutran, 2004). Accordingly, one would expect that grandparents who have retired to another country to live sometimes thousands of miles distant from their grandchildren would have pertinent observations to make about their methods of adjustment and responses to grandparenting. The following section describes the setting and method for this study. Then narrative elements from depth interviews with expatriate retirees are presented and the major grandparenting themes generated in the narratives are set forth. That is followed by a discussion of ways these narratives and

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themes contribute to existing research about Gp–Gc relationships. Lastly, I provide context for these interpretations by discussing the narrated experiences of expatriate retiree grandparents in relation to the more encompassing concerns for identity formation and establishing a coherent life story that includes the dual transitions of retirement and relocation to a new culture. Setting and participants Participants in this study live at the Lake Chapala Riviera. The Riviera is comprised of five towns situated along the north shore of Lake Chapala, Mexico's largest natural lake. Estimates of the population in the area—of both the Mexican residents and expatriates—vary widely. It is evident, though, that by all accounts there are over 12 000 year-round expatriates and the number soars to between 20 000 and 30 000 when seasonal residents are included. The latter figure amounts to nearly a quarter of the north shore's total population. Amenity migration to Lake Chapala is understandable: Located at a little over 5000' elevation and surrounded by dramatically steep and lush mountains, the area enjoys one of the most comfortable climates anywhere in the world. Although development of the expatriate retirement colony has sharply escalated prices of homes and most consumer goods, the cost of living nonetheless remains significantly lower than in either Canada or the U.S. Inexpensive public transportation is readily available, and Mexico's second largest city, Guadalajara, is less than an hour's drive to the north of “Lakeside,” as the expatriates usually refer to the north shore towns of Chapala, San Antonio Tlayacapan, Ajijic, San Juan Cosala and Jocotepec (more complete descriptions can be found in — 2004; Sunil, Rojas, & Bradley, 2007; Truly, 2002; see also www.lakechapalasociety.org). The participants in this study are all Canadian or U.S. citizens, most of whom are retired from careers as professional or technical workers. A few continue to work for income—a fiction writer who currently is on a media tour for his new book of short stories, an attorney who works part-time in a Mexican law office, and an editor for one of the Englishlanguage newspapers at Lakeside. Among the participants' former occupations are engineers, lawyers, salespersons, entrepreneurs (one participant, a co-founder of one of the largest multimedia conglomerates in the world, moved to Ajijic from earlier retirement in Hawaii), physicians and academics. With only two exceptions, all the couples who participated had been dual-career marrieds. More than half of all participants had been divorced at least once; all consider themselves to be racially of European ancestry, but two were born in Mexico of mixed ancestry parents. Method The data for this study have been constructed from depth interviews (also called “intensive” or “narrative” interviews; see Brenner, 1985; Lindlof & Taylor, 2002) which participants and I engaged in during my four sojourns to Lakeside between 2002 and 2006. From 39 depth interviews I obtained narratives contributed by 46 individuals; the difference in numbers represents seven interviews I conducted jointly with married couples. The depth interviews lasted from one and a

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half to 4 h and averaged over 2 h in duration; they ranged across topics initiated by both the expatriates and myself. Randall, Prior and Skarborn (2006) observed that older interviewees adjust their storytelling depending on who the interviewer is and what relationship they establish. My awareness of my co-construction role in the conversations has led me to focus my analysis on narratives, rather than simply on purported facts and events elicited in interviews. To aid my interpretations of participants' narratives by expanding my understanding of the historical, social and cultural setting, I also conducted 36 informant interviews with other expatriates and over 200 ethnographic interviews with both expatriate and Mexican residents. Most of the depth interviews were captured in detailed field transcriptions and notes; 17 of the participant depth interviews were audiotape recorded and supplemented by field notes. After repeated listenings to the recordings, I transcribed pertinent sections and, as an open-coding step, tagged sections that contained narratives about family relationships. The pertinent sections I bracketed and tagged were stories or story fragments that related to grandparenting. As Gubrium points out, humans are active storytellers engaged in a process of building “a subjectively preferred context for [one's] present life and its linkages” (2001: 29). “Narrative,” he says, “conveys to us not only what our experiences mean but how we are expected to take them into account” (2001: 29). I performed a similar operation on my field transcriptions and notes and highlighted relevant sections. I then used the constant-comparison method (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) to identify themes within that body of constructed data. Repeated consultations of a progressively refined list of thematic descriptions, and alternating repeated reviews of the highlighted narratives, resulted in a set of patterned narrative plots. The narratives are patterned in that their interpretable meanings occurred with enough frequency and similarity that they can be called typifying and can be expected from future similarly situated participants. The interviews yielded seven such patterned narrative plots: five that describe positive grandparent– grandchild relationships, four of which are about accounts for the migration decision and its consequences for the grandparent– grandchild relationship; and two concerned with stories about devitalized or negative relationships with grandchildren. Finally, I reread all transcripts and listened to all recorded interviews in what Johnstone calls the “reading and listening” of discourse analysis (Johnstone, 2000: 126). Using my reading and listening and my bracketed excerpts, I then created my own interpretive text that set forth plausible meanings for my participants as they constructed and understood their own stories. In writing my interpretive text, I considered the discourse analytic constraints of place, time, diverse histories, language, source and media, others present, prior discourse, and participants' plausible purposes in the interviews (see Johnstone, 2000: 123–126). This last step provides the “local spheres of meaning” (Gubrium, 2001: 20) that help validate my interpretations of data. Expatriates' grandparenting narratives In this section are descriptions and excerpts of participants' stories about their relationships with their grand-

children. Seven of the 46 interview participants had no grandchildren, which gave me a source of 39 grandparent participants. The seven non-grandparents also gave me a potential source of negative cases for validating my interpretations through negative case analysis (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002: 223). None of these seven expressed regret or longing over not having grandchildren: Bob Schneider was among them. Commenting on his two daughters' not having had children, he said: BS

She just ah hasn't found a replacement for her daddy. [laughs] That's what I tell her [laughing] but, no, she's ah she seems to be in no hurry to get married although she has certainly those guys knocking on her door. And Paula doesn't seem interested in having children so I guess I don't take offense because I don't have any need for grandchildren.

The positive cases Most of the grandparent participants (35 of 39) expressed joy or gratitude in their grandparenting roles and confidence in the strength of their relationship with grandchildren. Comprising the positive themes are expressions of loving attachment to grandchildren and four accounts that mitigate the distance between interviewees and their grandchildren. Love and attachment The first narrative theme that became obvious is the consistently positive commentary on being a grandparent and having grandchildren. Karl Crane's statement typified this sentiment: KC:

And I love=I think they're [i.e., other expatriate retirees] like me with grandchildren, you know, we love our grandchildren very very much.

An expression of the increasing attachment to the active social role of grandparenting is found in the narrative told by Jack Putnam, a retired university administrator and historian: JP:

I'd love to be closer to the grandkids… I'm feeling the need for their company more as I age, even though they're extremely important to Maryanne [his wife], but she's more tolerant [of separation] than I am.

In some cases, the importance of the Gp–Gc relationship and the implicit paradox of the grandparent's migration was expressed in metaphorical terms. For example, Sarah Hammond quipped: SH:

The grandkids were the ticket price for my move down here.

Sarah recognizes that the central sacrifice, the “cost” associated with her relocation to Mexico, is the loss of her grandchildren's presence. For others, the separation is a challenge to be overcome, and the birth of a new grandchild is an occasion for transborder travel. Astrid, an American expatriate who was born in Scandinavia, is a grandmother-to-be. Her adopted son and his

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wife are expecting their first child, and Astrid is eagerly awaiting the event: AG:

I hope this is just the beginning. I expect my grandkids'll grow up in the Portland area, so I'll be making lots of trips up there. It's important to have lots of contact during those early years.

Distance of separation has benefits When asked what is the effect of separation by distance on their Gp–Gc relationships, however, participants took diverse approaches to explaining their situations. All those grandparent participants with positive Gp–Gc relationships reflected on the pleasures of travel to visit their grandchildren or having grandchildren visit them. In some cases the pleasure lies in part on being able to control the time of visiting and departure. One couple told of family reunions in Virginia, where they could stay only as long as they wished and could leave with no further obligations. Harriet Henderson said: HH:

When we want to leave we just do it. And we don't have to babysit. Goodbye, we have to go back to Mexico. [laughs]

For other grandparents the distance occasions long-term visits from grandchildren. MaryEllen Seifert, a retired union executive, described her contact with grandchildren from the United States: SM:

We see them about once a year. They come down here for the summer. We have two [grandchildren] that have come down here every summer that we've been here.

Some emphasized the value of having time alone with grandchildren, as in this narrative by Florence and Ralph Andrews: FA:

Yeah and we love to get our grandsons on their own and spend time

RA:

spend=spend some time

FA:

time when=alone with them we like spending time alone with them.

SB:

Quality grandparents'

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A more ambiguous account of relational improvement because of distance of separation is found in Deanna and Frank Dellacorte's narrative: DD:

Ah but we were, yeah, we were very very close and I'll be very honest with you we were probably too close and too involved when we were all up living in Ottawa.

SB:

That's an interesting point.

DD:

Yes.

SB:

Not many people are willing to [

FD:

It just happened.

DD:

That's right and we were very

FD:

Both sides, both our son and his wife and our daughter and her husband and their kids we were far [

DD: FD: DD:

in each other's pockets in each other's face and involved with all of their problems and of course we were there with the big deep pockets when when needed, not that they would ask but we were there to offer.

FD:

They needed it.

DD:

Oh yes and ah we moved down here and all of a sudden we didn't hear their day to day problems.

FD:

I'll tell you the most amazing thing is they're still alive and well.

DD:

And they're surviving, yes.

SB:

They're doing it without you, without you right there.

DD:

Yes, doing very well.

FD:

They're alive and well and we don't hear any all the day-to-day stuff=we might hear from them every three months or so, we say now what's new and they say nothing. Well I can't believe that because every day there was something new when we were there.

SB:

That true?

FD:

But anyway they've survived.

DD:

So I think it's been good for all of us

FD:

Yeah.

DD:

in a certain retrospect for this to happen.

[ FA:

Yes

RA:

Al::together different

FA:

Yes

RA:

away from their parents.

Some grandparents explicitly argued that their Gp–Gc relationships were strengthened by the decision to retire to Mexico. Judy Graham said the geographic separation facilitates increased contact overall: JG:

We fly back and forth all the time. I actually get to see them more now than before [laughs]. Should've done it [i.e., moved to Mexico] long ago.

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SB:

So it's in a way it's easier to sort of measure the distance between you and monitor it?

DD:

Yeah absolutely.

FD:

It's very very interesting.

DD:

It's better for us and it's better for them.

SB:

Yeah.

DD:

They're standing on their own feet=not my daughter so much, she's always been very selfsufficient. But my son and his wife…

A typically enthusiastic description of the way media facilitate contact was related by Jackie Easton: JE:

In some narratives the necessity and availability of new modes of contact were framed as improvements in the relationships, as reflected in this story about the MacAlisters' children and many grandchildren: SB AM

The separation by geographic distance encourages the next generation to be self-sufficient, perhaps particularly in financial terms, as suggested by the “… in each other's pockets” comment being followed by reference to the grandparents' “deep pockets.” The separation also helps avoid what they see as excessive enmeshment in one another's daily affairs. At the same time, this narrative demonstrates and justifies a measured distancing of the relationship with children and grandchildren. Immediately preceding the foregoing excerpt, the Dellacortes had described in minute detail the activities of their granddaughter when she visits Lakeside during the summer and her routines on their many telephone calls between Lakeside and Canada. In such a scenario the grandparents schedule, monitor and regulate the degree of intimacy with their grandchildren. Communication technologies mitigate distance With only one exception, all grandparents who maintain contact with their children and grandchildren named email as a primary means of communication. One couple have no computer and rely mainly on frequent telephoning. A typical description of the use of communication technologies as a substitute for physical contact was given by retired psychologist Riley Baker: SB

How do you keep in touch with your kids and grandkids? And I assume you still have a network of friends.

RB

Oh yeah, yeah. Mainly with ah email. Yeah I probably spend at least an hour a day ah on email back and forth

SB

So you're connected at home?

RB

Yeah yeah yup. But then I use the telephone a lot too. And are are you familiar with Net-to-Phone? Yeah.

RB

Yeah. Okay.

SB

Yeah, that makes it economical.

RB

Yeah. I can talk to anybody in the States for oh half an hour and it may cost a dollar and a half on Net-toPhone.

So what do you, how do you keep in touch with kids and grandkids? Oh, email and ah=some of them for a long time we weren't hearing anything from the West Coast factor at al l =Jesse was part of that=they just sold their house in Sacramento, ah but I would hear from the two in Virginia all the time and if I=I said to my youngest daughter one time on the phone and I said it's strange you and I were at odds so much and Jane [granddaughter] and I never got along, and an=I said Sue [Jesse's daughter] and I were so close and I was so close to Jesse, too, an=and I wasn't close to you guys, and she says, Yeah now we won't leave you alone. [laughs] So it's interesting how it's changed. Yeah, now we've got this new Vonage system so we can call them and they can call us because they have long distance ah: privileges on their phone.

The migration decision is reversible Among the mitigations for the geographical separation from grandchildren is the argument that one always can return to the place of origin. Florence Andrews, who has been at Lakeside for nine years, said: FA

Originally we said we'd come for three years=we've always said we're not here forever

SB

So you just live on a contingent basis?

FA

Every year we go back to them and say another year.

Similarly, Jack Putnam described the contingent nature of his and his wife's decision to migrate: JP:

SB

Oh do you have Skype? It's great and we have a video camcorder so we can see each other. It makes such a difference.

We never decided to stay here forever. We just said we'd stay on as long as it works for us. We might go back someday. We can always go back.

Restaurateur Duncan Steiter used a common metaphor to express the reversibility of the migration decision: DS:

You know, the gate swings both ways at the border.

The swinging gate metaphor appeared repeatedly. Among the reasons for returning to places of origin, interviewees most frequently cited a desire for more personal involvement with grandchildren. Also mentioned were boredom with the small town living, marital discord or divorce, change of health status of a family member, and, for Canadians, financial reasons. As

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all the participants were still residing at Lakeside, these reasons were attributions made about others who had returned across the border. The grandchildren will move Another contingency argument that justifies and mitigates the geographical distance is the likelihood of grandchildren moving. As to the grandchildren's own relocations, Jack Putnam said: JP:

Yes, I'd like to live closer to the kids and grandkids. But if we moved back to Vancouver we wouldn't be any closer, the kids are in Alberta and Toronto, and Steve [in Toronto] is thinking of leaving for the American Southwest, and the grandkids are in Shanghai and in college so they will be moving on. So there's a certainty the generations will be dispersed.

Other grandparents noted that their families are part of a mobile society. Widower Grady Morris said he had moved twice in the United States to live near his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. GM:

But then I realized they're going to keep moving, you know for his work, and I'm not going to spend the rest of my life following them around.

they might return across the border. She, however, gets her “warm and fuzzies” and leaves without getting in grandchildren's “back pocket.” By attributing this lack of substantive involvement in the day-to-day lives of her grandchildren to not wanting to crowd them, and by likening the short-term visits to her previous life on the road as an RV nomad, she provides a plausible justification for diminishment. Four grandparents have severely diminished or no contact with their grandchildren. In two instances inheritances or other financial considerations are blamed by the grandparents for the relational disruption. In the other two situations, the presence of great-grandchildren in the family appears to marginalize the expatriate retiree and reduces the relevance of them to their succeeding generations of offspring. In all four situations, though, grandparents' disagreements with or low evaluations of their children or their children's spouses are cited as contributing factors in the disruption of the Gp–Gc relationship. The case of Frank Remick, a retired dentist who has lived at Lakeside for over 30 years, illustrates both the financial obstacle and next-generation problem: SB:

And you had children?

FR:

Two sons, no girls. I've got three granddaughters, one I liked and two I don't. That's=oh, I have three great-grandkids [hands over photo] I'm in love with this one, she's five, I want to abduct her, only met her once, this year when I visited up there, and they've got a one and a half year old boy and an older boy. But I'm in love with this one. My younger son's wife, she's not likeable, and their two kids I don't like them either. They took money from me for tuition, now in law school and medical school. The other granddaughter she didn't ask for anything so I gave her a thousand dollars for graduation and she was grateful for the gift.

Some cases of diminishment Less engaged forms of distance mitigation are evident in a small subset of the narratives. Some reflect a mild diminishment of intimacy based on recognition that there is not much of sustaining common interest. Psychotherapist Ruth Telemann expressed the lack of common ground as an aspect of independence: RT:

They visit occasionally, and they love it here. But they're all independent and I'm independent, so we don't have to visit. We go our own ways, there's no sense of obligation.

Others justify a lack of substantive intimacy as part of a longstanding pattern in their lives. In the following example, Florence Dyer had been discussing why expatriates return home: FD

Well a lot of people leave because they miss their grandchildren.

SB

Yeah, I've heard that.

FD

Yeah, and I think that's a biggie.

SB

How do you deal with that? Do you have grandchildren?

FD

We have two. Ahm, well we go up once a year and visit and ahm we stay just long enough to get our warm and fuzzies and then we leave but we're accustomed to doing that, you know with all our RVing you get used to coming and going you know, I don't want to live in their back pocket. [both chuckle]

Florence asserts that missing intimate contact with grandchildren for some people is “a biggie,” so much so that

183

Lorna Hanks talked with me for over 2 h and did not voluntarily mention her grandchildren, in spite of our discussion of her life history, travels back to the U.S., and the range of visitors to her residences in Mexico. Only toward the end of our interview, when I asked specifically about her current relationships with family members, did she offer this reflection: LH

Ah yeah=I'm a great-grandmother now so [laughs] my daughter is just entranced with her first grandson. Ah she had two granddaughters and she's had a boy and a girl and she's had more than one marriage. Ahm the girl is ah well I, I, she is a lawyer, she is married ahh to a lawyer.

SB

This is your granddaughter?

LH

My granddaughter, and they now have a little boy. He'll be a year old this Thanksgiving.

Lorna had never seen the great-grandchildren. At the time of her interview she was preparing for a trip to the United States to visit an old friend, but had no plan to see any of her family.

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Discussion Overall, expatriate retiree grandparents express strong enthusiasm for their grandparenting roles. Researchers generally conclude, however, that distance and reduced opportunity for contact with grandchildren are associated with reduced satisfaction with the grandparenting role (Hayslip, Shore, Henderson & Lambert, 1998; Peterson, 1999); reciprocally, contact with grandchildren has been found to increase grandparents' role satisfaction and relational closeness (Folwell & Grant, 2006). Indeed, Reitzes and Mutran (2004) argued that contact with grandchildren “may provide grandparents with a range of positive experiences, including a sense of emotional closeness to grandchildren, strengthened generational ties linking family members, social solidarity, and the satisfaction of fulfilling normative expectations” (2004: S9). My expatriate participants are of two types in this regard: Almost all are positive about their grandparenting roles and about their relationships with their grandchildren; a very small minority are disconnected from their grandchildren and from the grandparenting role, seeming to take little satisfaction from being a grandparent. Those role- and relationshippositive grandparents, however, acknowledge their geographical distance from grandchildren yet, for the most part, express strong and affectionate bonds with them. This seeming contradiction is similar to findings reported by Harwood and Lin, in their thematic analysis of grandparents' written accounts of conversations with their college-aged grandchildren (Harwood & Lin, 2000). There, the geographical distance subtheme, while characterized as depriving the Gp–Gc relationship of contact, sometimes was accompanied by assertions that the relationship was nonetheless very strong. Harwood and Lin noted that in these instances “the geographical distance served to frame and perhaps even accentuate the emotional closeness of the relationship” (2000: 40). That framing extends to both frequency and duration of visits. Indeed, three of my participants claimed that the geographical distance occasioned more frequent visiting than before their migration to Mexico. Jack Putnam commented that “we spend longer visits with the grandkids now than we did when we all were in Canada.” Consequently, these grandparents' narratives do more than frame the distance as accentuate emotional closeness, they reflect an instrumental enhancement of connectedness. In addition, a significant and suggestive theme in these narratives indicates that many migrant retiree grandparents use the separation by distance to their advantage. This occurs in three ways. First, the necessity for transborder visits gives the grandparents control over the timing, duration and content of their contacts with grandchildren. Second, for some grandparents it allows them shared time with grandchildren without the mediating presence of the middle generation. About half the participants expressed a desire or appreciation for such exclusivity in the Gp–Gc relationship. Finally, there is some evidence that expatriate grandparents see the separation by distance as an opportunity to extricate themselves from excessively close or dependent relationships with their own children and, possibly, grandchildren. The distance factor also is mitigated in the Lakeside grandparents' narratives by the acknowledged contingent nature of the migration decision. While studies of within-border

retirement migration often acknowledge the possibility of a return migration to places of origin (e.g., Longino, 1995; McHugh & Mings, 1996), much of the research on international retirement migration conceives the transition as a oneway move (O'Reilly, 2000; Warnes, King, Williams, & Patterson, 1999). Many of the Lakeside retirees expressed a willingness to leave the decision of returning one day across the border as an open-ended one. Such a logic and practice enables grandparents to reduce potential threats to their Gp– Gc relationship by maintaining the possibility for closing the geographical distance in the future. Those expatriate grandparents who see distance in less contingent terms ultimately accept it as an unavoidable cost of their life situation. A typifying expression of this sentiment was narrated by Mary Ellen Seifert, who said she was in Mexico “till the end”: MAS

Yeah. They ah they, yeah we'd like to see our grandkids a little more often than we have, but we've adjusted to that, and ah we keep in touch with phone and email and ah the grandchildren have their own email and whatever.

The minority of interviewees who have diminished or poor relationships with grandchildren showed several commonalities in their narratives. Most prominent of these qualities was trouble in the relationship with the parent or parents of the grandchild. This was particularly explicit if the troubled relationship was with a daughter-in-law. In three of these participants' interviews, an accusation or rule of thumb about problems with the daughter-in-law was expressed. Jackie Easton, who has close and positive relationships with her own daughter and that daughter's children, said this about her distant relationship with her son's children: JE:

Yeah, but the relationship with grandkids depends on whether their mother is your daughter or your daughter-in-law. My sister and my friend have the same situation. My son's wife is=is overprotective and keeps the grandkids from us. That was true even when we were in Victoria, and that was only seventyfive miles apart.

In most of these troubled relationships involving grandparents with their own children, some aspect of discord about finances or inheritances played a part. Those concerns either limited grandparents' access to their grandchildren or implicated the grandchildren in the activities that alienated the first and second generations. Lastly, the great-grandparents I interviewed expressed little enthusiasm for grandparenting or great-grandparenting—as evidenced by lack of initiating talk about grandchildren or great-grandchildren, lack of animation or elaboration in their conversation, and explicit comments about disconnections—and had no contact or diminished contact with their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. These seemingly negative situations are consistent with theoretical findings in life-course models of intergenerational communication and adaption (e.g., Anderson et al., 2005; McKay & Caverly, 2004) and add to the growing body of empirical findings on the influence of lifespan transitions on Gp–Gc relationships (e.g., Folwell & Grant, 2006; Harwood, 2004; Harwood &

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Lin, 2000). The great-grandparent interviewees, however, did not construct their diminished participation in grandparenting or great-grandparenting in negative terms of regret or deprivation. Instead, the dominant attitude was benign acceptance. Conclusion: grandparenting narratives and identities While this study presents evidence in support of the extant research findings on grandparenting and the Gp–Gc relationship and adds suggestive findings about grandparents' constructive uses of geographical separation, it's purpose is not solely to test or contribute to the paradigmatic literature. Polkinghorne distinguished “paradigmatic comprehension,” or the search for facts, events and themes as instances of categories, from “narrative comprehension,” or the search for stories and story fragments that capture the meanings people use to constitute their lives (Polkinghorne, 1995). On this view, this study also can bring to light alternative ways of understanding human experience, including alternative perspectives on aging, retirement migration and identity that honor the rich variation and adaptability of individuals' unique experience, and can thereby inform about the ways communicating behaviors are related to life history and identity.2 Kenyon and Randall (2001) point out the tension between stories and data by noting that aggregating data from individuals' narratives can trivialize or even violate the subjective value of a lived experience and can violate the trust by which tellers entrust hearers with the sanctity of their life stories. Stories are the way we constitute and account for our lives' actions and history; as such, they are intimate and personal. Narrative gerontology researchers, then, strive to retain the “voice” of participants and recognize that stories are conditioned by culture, hearers, site, mode, and other contextual factors. They recognize that “in extracting the stories of more than one person, something is lost and something is gained” (Kenyon & Randall, 2001: 13). I wish to lose as little as possible of both aggregated themes and the unique voices of expatriates and their identity narratives. Each participant's history, current circumstances, specific relationships with grandchildren, and specific communicative arrangements and rationales for maintaining contact with grandchildren differ are unique. Nonetheless, a general picture of the contribution of grandparenting to identities of expatriate retirees can be sensed in the interviews, and that sense is made available only through the instrument of the researcher in collaboration with the participants. As I moved back and forth in the constant comparison method, and from rehearing the tapes and reading transcriptions and notes to transforming my hearings and readings to an interpretive text, I felt the immediacy and pathos of each

2 A move in this direction was taken by Mueller et al. (2002), in their development of a “person-centered,” rather than a variable-centered, method for identifying types of Gp–Gc relationships. My approach is person-centered but, unlike Mueller, I aim not to add to categorical knowledge as such about Gp–Gc relationships but to hear the expatriates' narratives both as descriptions of their lived experience and as self-expressions that contribute to the work of creating a coherent autobiography.

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grandparent's connectedness to the grandchildren and to his or her own life story. I also was struck by the grandparents' expressed desire to justify their circumstances of living—by choice—at a great distance from kin and by the qualities of character that emerged from their telling of grandparenting stories. The first of these reflections amounts to a macroproposition interpretable from all grandparents' narratives: I (We) love my (our) grandchildren, often augmented by an intensive—very much, or so much that I would like to abduct her or and I miss them all the time, and so forth. This moral and practical proposition is the ground upon which the figure of each grandparent's personal circumstances is constructed and rationalized. It reflects and articulates awareness of a powerful cultural norm and local spheres of meaning, and as such frames the Gp–Gc relationship as one that is founded on love and affection, as well as on grandparental responsibility. This is not to say the expression is inauthentic or is merely formulaic—I hear the participants' stories as strategic but genuine expressions of their opinions, values, experiences and reasons. That macro-proposition is elaborated with an inevitable caveat: But… and the buts vary with the teller's circumstances: But we don't see them as often as we'd like; but there's a problem with the parent; but we haven't gotten along since…; but they have kids of their own now; etc. These But-clauses express a recognition of the constraining conditions on their own Gp–Gc relationship (and, in the cases discussed above, the Ggp–Ggc relationship). As such, the caveats acknowledge the influence of distance and their decision to migrate away from kin. Of course, there are mitigating strategies that can be matched up to the But-clauses: So…. And the So-clauses likewise vary with each teller's situation: So we travel more and see them more now than before;… so we make frequent use of the Internet, telephone and instant messaging;… so they are forced to become more self-sufficient;… so we won't be in each other's back pockets;… so we might move back home in the north some day; etc. One So-clause that implicitly underlies each participant's caveats is one that expresses an acceptance of the circumstance of distance and a willingness to work around it in the Gp–Gc relationship. Sarah Hammond expressed this sentiment as a trade-off: “The grandkids were the ticket price for my move down here.” Others simply said, like Mary Ellen Seifert, “we'd like to see our grandkids a little more often than we have, but we've adjusted to that,” or Jack Putnam's “it's not exactly what we'd like, but it's okay for now, and so that's the way it is.” In many instances, these So-clauses can be read as applying to both tellers and their grandchildren. When expatriates say their grandchildren and children can become more self-sufficient without the grandparents nearby, they are simultaneously declaiming their own self-sufficiency. Often my interviewees described the expatriate colony friendships as being stronger and more constant than those they had in their places of origin. The reason they give is that they are forced to connect more closely with friends because they are isolated by distance from family and their native culture. Consequently, with regard to family relationships, expatriate grandparents see themselves as self-sufficient but striving for connection locally; with regard to fellow expatriates they see themselves as highly connected in a quest for social and cultural support. Similarly, the So-clause that

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says we don't want to be excessively enmeshed in our grandchildren's and children's personal day-to-day lives (“I don't want to live in their back pocket,” said Florence Dyer) also can be read as a veiled statement that they prefer their offspring to be less enmeshed in the grandparents' personal day-to-day lives. In sum, the explicit recognition of constraints on relationships occasioned by grandparents' voluntary decision to relocate to another country contributes to the expatriate identity those qualities of being realistic, accountable and resigned to the consequences of the migration decision. It is present throughout my data and motivates not only the But-clauses as specific expressions of the constraints but also the So-clauses that mitigate, explain or elaborate on them. Indeed, the acceptance of distance in the Gp–Gc relationship is articulated as a kind of necessary opportunity for forebearance, an ennobling burden that allows for continued optimism and enjoyment or management of the kin relationships. The accounts that say distance fosters greater selfsufficiency and helps avoid excessive enmeshments in the private lives of both grandparents and offspring also show expatriate grandparents as being independent and self-motivated. Similarly, accounts centering around offspring having their own directions and interests, and those centering on offspring mobility and grandparent travels, also reflect and construct in their articulation an identity of independence. While the rhetorical form of this macro-proposition characterizes the grandparents' stories and reveals personal qualities held in common, the specifics of each storyteller's But-clauses and So-clauses differ. These story differences within a larger narrative structure reflect the unavoidable fact that local spheres of meaning, institutional narratives and shared contexts contribute to biographies at the same time as each person's active storytelling (see Gubrium & Holstein, 2001; Holstein & Gubrium, 2000). Finally, the commonly heard assertion that “the gate at the border swings both ways” conveys two core values that contribute to the expatriate grandparent identity—a striving to live in the present without making firm commitments to future actions, and a willingness to construct a contingent life. An explicit display of this contingent and present-oriented quality of expatriate identity is provided by retired entrepreneur Kevin McCarrick: KM:

We, I=I=I don't know if we'll even be here five years or ten years from now, but probably. I=I'm not the type to do a lot of long term planning, sort of take life as it comes. If you ask am I going to die here I'll say no, I'm going to keep on living. [all laugh] We haven't seen that as a decision we have to face now.

Acknowledgements My thanks go to the officers and staff of the Lake Chapala Society and to all the participants who have given me their time, welcomed me into their homes and shared their life stories with me. Their generosity and trust remind me of the responsibilities we researchers bear and of our duty to be faithful to our commitments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in San Antonio, Texas, November 17, 2006.

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