Grandparents – A Family Treasure

Grandparents are a family’s greatest treasure, the founders of a loving legacy, The greatest storytellers, the keepers of traditions that linger on in cherished memory. Grandparents are the family’s strong foundation. Their very special love sets them apart. Through happiness and sorrow, through their special love and caring, grandparents keep a family close at heart. ~Unknown Source

Did you know last Sunday was National Grandparents Day? Sometimes the day can pass with little notice, and it isn’t a day for gifts and cards as Mothers Day and Fathers Day can be.  Our grandchildren are gifts enough. You can see that my mother thought so by the big smile she has on her face while posing with some grandchildren and a great grandchild. Some of the other pictures here will have me smiling as much with some of my grandkids.

So what led to us having a day to celebrate grandparents? Credit goes to a West Virginian housewife, Marian Lucille McQuade who led a grassroots effort to establish a special day to recognize the importance of grandparents in a child’s life. Her primary motivation was to promote the need to pay attention to lonely elderly people in nursing home. She also hoped having a special day of honor would persuade grandchildren to listen and learn from the years of wisdom their grandparents had accumulated.

In 1979, Mrs. McQuade saw her work rewarded when then President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the first Sunday after Labor Day to be Grandparents Day. This is part of his proclamation.

Grandparents are our continuing tie to the near-past, to the events and beliefs and experiences that so strongly affect our lives and the world around us. Whether they are our own or surrogate grandparents who fill some of the gaps in our mobile society, our senior generation also provides our society a link to our national heritage and traditions.

We all know grandparents whose values transcend passing fads and pressures, and who possess the wisdom of distilled pain and joy. Because they are usually free to love and guide and befriend the young without having to take daily responsibility for them, they can often reach out past pride and fear of failure and close the space between generations.

Wouldn’t it be great if grandkids everywhere sat down beside a grandparent this week and asked them about when the grandparent was a kid? The trouble is, most of us wait too late to want to hear those stories. Or to record them for the next generation.

Yet, we need that family history, those connections to the past. Here I am with a few of my grandchildren. Sometime I wonder if I’m missing opportunites to tell them about back when I was their age. Often, it seems so much better to hear what’s going on in their lives.  I know I missed opportunites to hear my grandparents’ stories. Perhaps I was too young to know what to ask them, or even to grasp that I might need to ask before it was too late. The same with my father. I wish now I’d asked more about his growing up years and those trips he took on a motorcycle when he was in his early twenties. I heard bits and pieces but there was surely so much more if I’d only taken the time to ask and listen.

I did listen to my mother’s stories in the last years of her life. Whenever we were in a doctor’s office or waiting for this or that, I’d get her to talk about how things were when she grew up. Angel Sister, my first Rosey Corner novel, was the result of those conversations. Mom’s stories helped me be able to step back to my characters’ time in the 1930’s and 40’s. While Angel Sister is fiction and not Mom’s story, the background of the book owes much to her.

Some grandparents don’t wait to be asked. They write down their stories for their families. Every person I know who has one of these written stories of youth and marriage by a parent or grandparent treasure every word.

It’s not just the highlights of life that people find interesting, but also the little details. Ordinary days like blackberry picking or cutting firewood. A “this is how it was for me” story is certainly something all of us who love putting one word after another could do for his or her family. Maybe not only write your story, but listen to the older generation in your family and write that down too. Who knows? You might find a novel lurking in those memories the way I did. Or if you aren’t into writing, I know some families take time to make recordings of their loved ones talking about times in the past. My mother was visited once by someone gathering information about the past for a history project. I have the tapes of those conversations, but need to transcribe them.

Grandparents are a treasure. Children’s lives are better when they have grandparents or surrogate grandparents to make them feel loved and valued. That is surely the best thing a grandparent can do for a child.

The simplest toy, one which even the youngest child can operate, is called a grandparent. —Sam Levenson

To a small child, the perfect granddad is unafraid of big dogs and fierce storms but absolutely terrified of the word “boo.”…Robert Brault

Grandparents are a delightful blend of laughter, caring deeds, wonderful stories and love. ~Unknonw Source

Did you have the blessing of knowing your grandparents or do you now have the blessing of being a grandparent?

My Newsletter Giveaway Winners

The winners of my newsletter giveaway were Una of MN, first place winner of the book/tote bag and her choice of one of my books. She picked The Outsider. One 2nd place winners was Jodi from GA who also picked The Outsider as her prize. Both choosing my first Shaker book sort of surprised me. Blanche was my other 2nd place winner. I haven’t heard from her yet.  If you get my newsletters and take part in my giveaway fun, thank you. Next week I’ll come up with a giveaway chance here on One Writer’s Journal.