Photo courtesy of Jane Manaster.
In a sense, grandchildren present a micro-world. Our six, with or without photos and pre-K drawings, are unique individuals with their own characteristics and personalities. And all of them fairly willingly teach us the basics of operating our phones…
I can’t single out a mind-bending or world-changing contribution, but we have abundant tales to share with relatives and friends even — or especially — without being asked to do so.
We’re way beyond diapers now, nearing the end of babysitters. Our grandkids add up to three boys and three girls. No! Excuse me! Two of the girls changed their names, making them less gender specific. I find that’s close to average, though not all grandkids are as confident to share with us their private concerns. I never feel we’ve been short-changed, just very blessed that such a lively bunch know they are lovingly accepted.
Among the six, we have one who recently shot a squirrel on his grandparents’ private land in Oklahoma, then stewed it for an unusual urban Dallas dinner that was quite hard to stomach by a vegetarian grandma. One grandkid works on a strictly regulated cannabis farm in Colorado, another one jet-sets around the country on an exacting, exciting job in the modern music world, still managing to achieve great grades in his junior college year. One is now a college freshman in religious studies, and our 14-year-old granddaughter sings in the Greater Dallas Children’s choir.
Memories vacillate between serious and a little less so. A while back, on the walk home from his church pre-school as a 3-year-old, a grandson confided to his older brother ’s friend, “Some people believe God lives up there,” he said. Equally confident, when learning to read he saw a sign posted on a tree and proudly spelled out “Lost frog!” Very young grandkids don’t hesitate to articulate what is important to them.
Seeing the young lives our three children have brought into the world, along with their temporary or lasting spouses, I recognize how lucky we are. Perpetual apprehension, annoyances and not infrequent requests for supplementary funds are well mitigated by joy. We can “ tut-tut” as much as we like and claim how, “When we were young, etc.” But for sure our grandchildren are much more accepting of religious, racial and language differences, and far more sensitive and perceptive than we were.
