LOVING GRANDPARENTS ARE A RARE TREASURE

This post will not be a tribute to my own loving grandparents, because I didn’t have any.  My maternal grandmother died  in rural Indiana when my  mother was thirteen.   Mother went away to school, and at age 21,  married my father in Chicago while she was attending musical college–much to the chagrin of my paternal grandparents.  They didn’t like her,  and so naturally, she didn’t like them. As a result, we seldom saw my father’s parents except for brief visits every few years.  My father’s brother lived across the street from them, and his children were the ones they cared about.  My widowed, paternal  grandfather lived on a farm with my uncle’s family of four children, so those were his “real” grandchildren.  I don’t remember any of my grandparents sitting down and talking to me or showing the slightest interest in me or my life.

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So, I do have grandparent envy when my husband talks about the wonderful relationship he had with his grandparents in Nebraska.  If you read his book, A Preacher Called Sinn, you will understand what a profound effect their love had on his childhood.  During the depression, his parents were under stress, afraid of losing their farm, and consequently home life was fraught with tension. But my husband had a safety net—he could go across the road and enjoy the unconditional love of “Grandma Alice and Grandpa Will.”

Grandparents living nearby can serve as back up parents, compensating for the occasional lapse in parenting skills  on the part of their own children.   And even if they don’t live nearby, faraway grandparents can still offer loving support in the way of phone calls, special family trips together, visits, birthday and Christmas cards, and even social media.

In Hillbilly Elegy, the author J. D. Vance writes of a tumultuous childhood with a drug addicted mother, and divorced parents.  The only thing that saved him was the knowledge that his grandparents would always be there for him.   Who knows what your grandchildren will accomplish in life because of the love you’ve given them.