grandma's birthday
Every year on this day I remember my Grandma Mary. Today would be her 128th birthday. Some years her birthday falls on Mother’s Day. Not so this year, but the date is still indelibly written on my heart.
Grandma Mary had one child, my mom. When my grandfather passed away in his sixties, Grandma moved to Indianapolis and started fresh, leaving clothes in the closets and bills in the drawers of the homes she sold without even going back. She was a doting grandma, entertaining my sister and me in her apartment for overnights and play days. She baked pies and sewed me outfits, fashioned after the latest looks in Seventeen magazine. When she moved into a complex with a pool, I would often spend the weekend with her, swimming and then coming in for my special lunch: a sliced apple, a hotdog without the bun and a Coca-Cola.
The summer that I turned nine, Grandma Mary took me on a 21-day Greyhound Bus tour that left from Chicago and took us to California and back. I was the only child on the trip for most of those days. One other family of a Greyhound employee joined us in St. Louis for the last day of the trip, and BOY! was my nose out of joint?! I had built relationships with everyone on board, even singing over the tour guide’s microphone during long days with very few stops. I loved being the center of all that doting.
It would be so lovely if all children could have the unshared attention of a grandparent sometime in their lives, and that is why my husband and I are about to embark on a cross country driving trip with our seven-year-old grandson. (Campbell is already collecting workbooks for what he calls our “journey”.) My dream is to take each one of the kiddoes around their eighth birthday and give them a chance to have us all to themselves. But since I will have two turning eight next year, I’m starting with Campbell this summer. We hope to give Charlotte the chance to do it next summer, if she so desires (or maybe I should say, if her parents so desire!).
This is my way of honoring the legacy of my wonderful grandmother. Because to me, grandparenting is a calling, different from the calling of being a parent, but so important. Who but Jesus can love you as unconditionally as a grandparent?
Thank you, Grandma Mary, for modeling that for me.
Love, Liz
