Cherish Is The Word

Over the weekend I laid around finishing up Pearl's book, To My Daughter's With Love. Kenz went to a birthday party for a classmate at the park with her dad. No one came over. It was a quiet Sunday.

Kenz has a week off from school next week and I have the week off too. (Before I start my clinicals). We are both looking forward to being together, like in the olden days, when she and I spent whole days--- playing. (Not nights, only occassionally. I am the kind of grandma and nurse that sleeps nights.)

Speaking of sleeping nights, it won't be long until my son and his wife will be having less shut-eye. Not real soon, but in terms of seasons, their baby boy will be here in the next one. Brody is due in September. Our family is on the brink of change, which will include changing diapers. I can't wait to watch my son adapt to that task! He used to run out of the house when I changed Kenz. lol...

There's bits and pieces of Grandma wisdom in Buck's book, To My Daughter's With Love. One of the chapters, To You On Your First Birthday begins with....

"This is your day of independence. Wherever you are, in whatever country you were born, this day when you are one year old is a big day for you and your family, but especially for you. Your mother and father are proud of you and also of themselves, for they have kept you alive for whole year after they brought you into a tricky and troublesome world.

Buck goes on to zero in on the world of a 'one.' When she came to the perspective of the grandparent I read it over several times to absorb her keen insight.

"Grandparents have a secret sympathy with you because they know much more than your parents do about you, but you must not lean on this sympathy, for the first duty of grandparents is to their children, and not to their grandchildren who are you. This is prudent and reasonable, for they have to live with or near their children, your parents, even if only spiritually, but they reckon, sadly, that they will die before you have come to the the age of communion with them. They must in short look to the buttered side of the bread, and so they will often seem to desert you when you and they know that your parents and especially your mother are doing the wrong thing for you. Yes, you know it and they know that you know it, but still they will not dare to come to your aid. This sounds hypocritical, but when you are a grandparent you will understand the predicament of the aged."

What Buck is saying here is something I have to keep learning in my role as a grandmother. It's something that I've heard others grandmas express and that is---my daughter (or son) doesn't like when I give advice. They take it as a personal attack. This seems to be so common, I think it is normal.

Our children want to be the parent, the one in charge and not a min-mom (or dad). My own daughter started teaching me this lesson almost from day one. If I offered unsolicited advice I was (somewhat kindly ) reminded to--- MYOB. (Mind your own business) It's natural for some of us to jump in between our grandchild and their parent to try to fix things up. Buck says this isn't fruitful for the parent or the child. They have to work it out.... the frustrations and the hassles. I'm sure she's not talking about overlooking abuse, but the everyday give and takes that parents go through.

Later in the same chapter "To You on Your First Birthday' she writes...

There is much in common between the very young and the very old and they should not be separated. In the night when you waken, you feel yourself solitary, you cry aloud, you stretch out your arms, searching for another human being. Your mother or your father comes quickly and you are comforted because there is someone near you. So must there always be someones as long as you live, and therefore you must cherish those who love you and you must send out your love like a lantern to find those whom you can love, so that no one will be alone in the dark.

This chapter left me resonating with the truth that It doesn't matter if we are one or ninety-one we all need reminders to cherish one another.

(The copyright on this book is 1949 with several printings and the 'sixth impression" in 1972. )