The job of Mother doesn’t require an interview. It doesn’t even ask for a resume. Almost everyone with minimal qualifications gets hired. If there was a form you had to submit, even if it was on heavy card stock stationery in a classy shade of ivory, even with an embossed letter head, the first line under experience would read: NONE.

Or maybe you could put babysitter at age 13.

When asked at the preliminary interview who your influences were, you would have to say “my parents” but also June Cleaver of Ozzie and Harriet (if you’re my age) or Florence Henderson in The Brady Bunch (if you’re a bit younger) or Katey Sagal in Married with Children if you’re even younger (which could explain the rise in divorce).

This is a long winded way of saying you probably wouldn’t have been chosen. The interviewer would have said, “listen, go out and get some experience under your belt and come back in a few years and we’ll talk again.”

Now Grandmother is a whole other thing. You have been training for this one ever since you played with your Betsy Wetsy doll. You were tender and attentive and doting and loving. You spoiled your dollies rotten. And you weren’t ever tired and irritable. You weren’t worried about money or that cough the baby just developed, or if your husband was running around with his secretary. You weren’t concerned that the fuel pump had crapped out on Route 91 north. You didn’t go to Tupperware parties and wonder how you ended up like this. You didn’t struggle with your girdle to try to hold in the folds of fat that you hadn’t lost from your first pregnancy. You had a simple life. You had the energy of an eight year old because you were an eight year old.

So how to describe the condition known as Grandmother? If your knee hurts when your grandchild is there, you don’t feel it. If the dinner bill comes to $60 and he didn’t touch his shrimp scampi (which he insisted he would eat to the last drop) you wrap it up and throw it in the compost knowing your baby just fed next summer’s flower bed. If he wants the overpriced truck at Alley's and he already has something almost identical (that you bought him last week) you won’t tell him that. You’ll fork over the dough with a genuine smile because the smile on his face has no dollar amount.

There is nothing you won’t do or give or spend on this miracle who looks exactly like your family, is smarter than Einstein and sweeter than Splenda.

Recently, I bumped into a fellow member of the kvellers club (kvell in Yiddish means bursting with pride). We weren’t bragging (we don’t have to do that anymore, we have the videos on our iPhones, where just a flick of the finger shows how brilliant he is). No, we were singing the praises of the role of gramma, looking up at the heavens in gratitude that we get to do this.

“We never have to say no,” she said. “After all, that’s not part of our job.”

I agreed. We are just doing what we are supposed to do, saying yes as stated in the gramma handbook. Yes and more yes as in: How about two donuts, honey? How about a big hot fudge sundae with extra whipped cream? How about the large economy size bag of Twizzlers?

How lucky that no one asked for my credentials or for my recommendations. I just woke up one morning and voila, I got the job!

Nancy Slonim Aronie is the author of Writing from the Heart (Hyperion) and the founder of the Chilmark Writing Workshop on Martha’s Vineyar d.