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Great Post
Thank you.
My oldest was born with five greatgrandparents still living: my husband’s four grandparents, and one of mine.
I took my baby to see Papa Toad’s maternal grandfather a couple of months before he died. We lived in Oregon; he in Florida. I have great memories and pictures of the old man, born in Berlin and fled from Germany in a locked train bound for Portugal, holding my son and whispering loving endearments to his fat little buddha babyness: “Liebchen! Puppchen!”
Papa Toad’s paternal grandmother is still with us at 102. Her secret to long life, she says, is never worry. She had a tough life, but is loving and good, and a talented artist.
And my parents and Papa Toad’s parents are all four still relatively healthy and live near us most of the time (his folks winter in Fla.).
We moved from Oregon specifically to be near them all, and boy oh boy are we glad. Beautiful memories, helping each other, parties and dinners and sleepovers… so much blessing.
Thanks Arahant. Even though you’re making me fog up my specs with emotional tears now… thanks.
When my eldest brother was born, my father still had two of his grandparents alive, his mother’s father, who was his idol, and his father’s mother. I came along after his grandfather died and was named for him. As for his grandmother, she died when I was five. I remember visiting her once. She lived in rural Illinois and had an outhouse. And I remember her funeral, but that is about it.
On my mother’s side, with her parents being so much older, I believe all of her grandparents had passed before I was born. This, even though they lived long, full lives into their eighties.
Like my friend, your tadpoles should have memories of their grandparents long into their lives.
My sister had an interesting (to me) perspective on the human scale of time. She knew our great grandmother who was born in 1861, and she hoped to know her own great grandchildren who could reasonably be expected to see 2111. So she would have personally met people who spanned 250 years of history.
Perhaps increased life spans will give more people a chance to know their grandparents, but the trend to later childbearing is working in the other direction. My mother, who raised five children, died at 88 with no great grandchildren.
I read a beautiful book yesterday called Pink and Say, by Patricia Polacco.
In the story, a Union soldier boy, Sheldon, calle Say, is left for dead but found by a freed slave boy, Pinkus, called Pink also fighting for the Union.
The two boys forge a friendship, but Pink is hung after they are captured by Confederate forces.
While they were alive, Pink told say that he shook Abraham Lincoln’s hand, which he sees as a sign of great hope, and shakes Say’s hand, telling him, “You shook the hand that shook the hand of the great Abraham Lincoln!”
After Pink’s death, Say remembers him, and tells the story to his children and their children, keeping the memory of Pink alive. Say is the ancestor of the author.
She’s also written The Keeping Quilt about a quilt in her family made from fabrics from her ancestors. Here is the author holding the quilt, some pieces of which are more than 150 years old. She says, “As I run my hands over this horse, I can hear my grandmother’s voice. I haven’t heard her voice for 62 years. But she’d sit on the edge of my bed and say, ‘Tricia, whose dress make this?'”
Thanks for the nice post and topic. The snake in the pocket story is fantastic. Makes me think, my father was quite a character and I hope I have told my kids all the stories. They never knew him, either.
My father did not carry a snake in his pocket, I am 99.7% sure. He did often carry peanuts in their shell in his shirt pocket, though, to offer to our local bluejays or chipmunks. One time he dozed off in his lounge chair on our little patio and was awakened by a chipmunk extracting a peanut from his pocket.
My paternal grandfather died when my dad was nine. Bleeding ulcer in the depression leaving a wife and nine kids.
My paternal grandmother died when I was six.
My maternal grandfather I met once. A very thin man whose thinness made him tall. He was driven out of his family because he was a womanizer and his wife, my maternal grandmother, wasn’t putting up with that. He did not get to watch his six kids grow up.
My maternal grandmother came over from England and took care of us when my mother was in the hospital, dying. She did the housekeeping, the slightly remote mothering and made sure we were taken care of.
She left after my mother’s funeral.
Our household lacked a feminine and beneficial presence after that. She did not replace our mother, but maintained something that children need so we did not lack a great deal of the right kind of attention.
My paternal grandmother’s second husband was Alfred. But to me he was grampa. When we’d get to his house, I’d run in and climb up on his lap and kiss his whiskery cheek and hug him. He is the only grandfather I ever knew and he was good and warm and open with me, which is how I think grandfathers are intended to be. I model some of my presence with my own grandchildren based on him.
None of them ever saw my kids. I wish they had.
Oh, this reminds me of characters in my own family in so many ways.
We are all difficult people in my family. Every last one of us. The only saving grace is when any of us recognizes how difficult we are.
Maybe there’s no such thing as any easy person, just difficult people who see themselves for what they are and try to make amends for it.
My maternal great-grandmother and grandparents all died before I was two. I have no memory of them, but apparently my grandfather was a bit of a fast talker and the guy who could always get rationed goods during WW2. He also did a short stint in the Atlanta federal pen for running moonshine. He was late to my parents wedding because he got lost on the way. I think I would have liked him a lot. Probably less enjoyable as a father…not one to promote much stability. Unfortunately, my maternal mother was binge drinker, months dry, months drunk. But, interestingly, she was a bit of an outlier for women of her day, in that she could fix any small appliance anybody had. My dad tells me even after she had the massive stroke that eventually killed her, she would still tinker with things with her good hand.
My paternal grandfather never married my paternal grandmother and died when my daddy was bout 9. Despite living in the same town, he only remembered meeting him once. However, my Grandma Ida, was alive until I was almost 12. We often spent part of summers with her in the mountains of NC. There are many funny stories about her and she loved to sing. Church singing school is where she met my grandfather. I think both my dad and I inherited a love of mournful songs and songs in minor keys from her.
I often missed knowing my grandparents.
There is a Proustian feel to this that I like.
My husband likes to say my parents created the very situation that they both travelled 6000 miles to get away from. My mom was the youngest of 11, dozens and dozens of relatives still in Scotland. My dad was one of four, his mother had been a widow since he was two.
They raised their five here in Cali with no uncles or aunts, grandparents or cousins. Which my mom spoke of as a very, very good thing.
None of us five have strayed far though, so all of our children have over a dozen cousins, and aunts and uncles to spare. We vacation together every year, spend all of our holidays together and will celebrate together something as inconsequential as getting a tri tip on sale at Costco. While I am not sure all the kids would describe it as a very, very good thing – especially when they’re teenagers, they appreciate it more as they get older.
Until five years ago they had their grandad who was larger than life, and my mom is still with us at 88. My mom no longer knows any of us but is always happy to see us. My daughter and I recently took her baby girl to see my mom – her first great grandchild. You know what’s weird? When the baby was crying my mom was completely unaware – never even looked to see where the noise was coming from. But when I laid the baby on the floor to change her diaper she looked up at my mom and started cooing and smiling and that’s when my mom noticed a baby in the room and was happy at the sight.
Regarding long life spans, I believe it was Dave Barry who joked that kids today would live til 150, the first 80 of which would be healthy.
For me? If God spares me to 80 I plan on starting to smoke again, drinking (more), trying all the drugs I avoided in the 70s and 80s and taking up dangerous hobbies.
I likewise have no desire to outlive my health. A pessimist might point out it’s likely I’ve already done so, but as someone who can always out-pessim another pessimist, I’d then point out that there’s a huge difference between the ill-health of youth and the ill-health of old age:
It’s no fun to be sick while young, and you do feel like you’re missing out on a lot, but if you’re still walking, talking, and can still (kinda) work and contribute to the world (even if the contribution is disappointingly small), that’s still way better than the depths of senile dementia and no longer being able to toilet yourself.
My parents married older, and all four of my grandparents had died before I was born, so I never knew any of them, but I treasure the stories I have been told about them. I am 45 and consider myself very blessed that both of my parents are still alive and in good health. Because my parents were always so much older than everybody else’s, I always kind of assumed, without really letting myself think about it, that I would lose them sooner, but I haven’t. My Dad just turned 91. When I see my friends and cousins who have lost parents who were much younger than mine, I know how lucky I am.
My parents likewise married older, and with a significant age gap, too. So I had two grandmothers, though only one I really knew, since the other one died while I was quite young.
But in having older parents – and especially a dad even older than my mom – I feel like I’ve gotten some of the “grandparent experience” from my parents, too. Especially my dad, who was old enough to be Grandpa.
Midge: yes, older parents, especially older fathers can be more like grandparents than parents. My own parents have always been painfully aware of this. Once, in a moment of frustration, my rock ribbed pro-life father told me that after his experiences as an older father, he had come to the conclusion that everyone over the age of 30 should be sterilized. He was joking, kind of :) But there is no question: I was spoiled :)
My parents managed to successfully “go out of their way” to not be doting parents: for them not raising “spoiled” children was a very high priority! Even so, my dad was a bit more indulgent with me than my mom, at least about certain things… it’s hard to describe, actually. Dad could be so very rigid, and then every once in a while…
My father’s parents lived to very ripe old ages — my grandfather to the age of 92, and my grandmother to 100. I was close to them all my life; they were huge figures in my childhood and adulthood; and I only lost my grandmother recently, in my early 40s. I miss them both deeply and often think how much I wish I could still talk to them. I have a very detailed sense of who they were, their personalities, the story and the history of their lives, their tastes and their habits of thought; they are full people in my mind, with the details of every aspect of their character filled in; I remember their sense of humor; I know what they thought about books, literature, politics, music; I know what advice they would give me were they still alive. They are complete and real to me.
My mother’s parents died when I was much younger. My maternal grandmother died when I was eight, my maternal grandfather, when I was 11. They moved to Florida when I was about four years old, and so I saw them only on vacations. My memories of them are fragmentary — I remember the warmth of cuddling with my grandmother, and I remember that I loved her. I remember my grandfather letting me play in the sprinkler outside their house in Florida. I remember that he collected stamps as a hobby. But beyond that, they’re shadows in my mind.
I think so often of the ways I’m like my paternal grandparents, or unlike them; I can see so clearly what was passed on to me. And I know that the other half of me, genetically speaking, comes from these two people I never had the chance to know well. What would my life have been like had they lived longer? What influence would they have had on me if I’d known them well into my adulthood, as I did my paternal grandparents?
I fully understand the melancholy you’re expressing. I was so lucky to have known my father’s parents so well. What extraordinary people the two of them were, and what a huge influence they had on me. But I so regret that the other two people who gave me half of what I am are so vague in my mind, just shadows from my childhood, mysterious as a faded photograph in an ancient photo album.
It makes me terribly sad to know that my nephew Leo won’t remember my mother. She loved him so much, and had so much to teach and offer him. Nor will he know his aunt Rosella, who adored him consummately but who just passed away, tragically young, of cancer. It seems so unfair that he’s been deprived of knowing them both.
I hear you. It is your job to make them live for him, no?
This expresses it so well for me. I have more stories about my grandparents from my parents than I have direct memories.
Note the last paragraph. John Tyler, born in 1790, still had two living grandsons as of a few months ago. That is a span of 225 years with three living generations. This fascinates me.
Thank you all for your stories.
With my mom’s diminished capacity this is a hot topic in my family.
My sister and I were recently at a memorial service for a favorite neighbor. A woman came shuffling up on her walker and began to question me about where my mom lives.
I figured she was considering a move for herself.
No … she explained that she was too old to take care of her mother and was considering moving her.
My sister was standing behind me and muttered “shoot me now”.
Then we poured ourselves a stiff one.
I had my maternal grandparents until middle age. My grandfather was the last to die at age 92, 14 years ago.
They were a big part of my life and I still think about them everyday.
I love this book.
My Grandfather, born in 1909, had a relative (an aunt or something) who met President Lincoln one time.
I hope that person was born in 1959.
I guess we know what year you were born. ;^D