Nani poem by alberto rios

The Relationship between Grandmother and Grandson in Alberto Rios’s Nani

Children tend to have close relationships with their grandparents. The strength of these relations is driven by the caring nature of grandparents. The latter does not have much to do in life as they have retired and physically inactive, thus spend most of their time at home. When the grandchildren visit them, they allocate all their attention to them by attending to their needs as seen in Alberto Rios’s poem, Nani. In the latter, the speaker is reminiscing about his engagement with his grandmother during childhood days, which shows how the two were close to each other.

Alberto Rios shows that the grandmother was very caring to the speaker when he writes, “Nani never serves herself, she only watches me with her skin, her hair.” Here, Rios implies that grandmothers sacrifice their well-being to enhance the welfare of their grandchildren. In this scene, the grandmother dedicated her time and energy to provide the speaker with good and enough food to satisfy his needs.

In the poem, the speaker knew that her grandmother valued him a lot. Alberto Rios shows how valuable the narrator was to the grandmother when he writes, “and I wonder just how much of me will die with her.” Rios shows that the grandmother’s love to the speaker was unconditional. For this reason, the speaker believes that a significant part of him died with his grandmother.

However, the relationships between grandchildren and grandparents change over time, majorly because of the dynamics of life. In the poem, the speaker implies his distance relationship with the grandmother despite being close to each other in the past when he says, “To speak now-foreign words I used to speak.” The statement shows that the narrator has grown significantly from the time poem’s scene took place. For this reason, he cannot tell how he used to be close to the grandmother. Thus, he could not be close to her as he used to be if she was alive.

Alberto Rios informs readers about the strong relationship that exists between grandparents and grandchildren. In the Nani poem, the speaker remembers a scene when his grandmother served him with a good meal. The care and affection that the grandmother showed to the narrator lead to him wondering how much she valued him. Thus, the strong bond the two had makes the speaker to still remember the grandmother despite their connection not being as strong as it was in the past.