COLOURFUL building blocks are scattered across the living room floor and a thick rope for twirling dangles from the ceiling next to the dining table. Traces of children are everywhere in 75-year-old Marita May’s house in Bad Ems, a town some 75km north-west of Frankfurt, but no children live there. That’s because May is a so-called granny by choice or wish grandmother.
In German, a Wunschoma is someone who acts as a grandmother but is not biologically related to their “grandkids.” A Wunschopa is the term used for a wish grandfather. For about 10 years, she has been regularly meeting with two children from a family in her Rhine-Lahn district, arranged through a local project aimed at connecting older adults with families with young children.
For the Ingmann family’s children, May is simply “grandma.” May, a former teacher, went into partial retirement in 2009. That’s when she realised she missed the children.
Although she also has biological grandchildren, some of them lived too far away for her to see them regularly. “And then I thought about it: What can I put in their place now?” she said. “I had thought about doing something at the kindergarten or something else, but I wanted to stay free so that I could also travel.
And then suddenly there was a story in the newspaper about a wish grandma.” Someone to sing and play with She filled out a form and waited. “A while later, someone called here and said: Are you Mrs May?” she recalls.
Jennifer Ingman.