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Youth
George Bernard Shaw famously said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I get this as our bodies often give us less 'unexpected' feedback when we are younger, but youthfulness can continue throughout life. Having the spirit for Life, supported by healthy doses of social connections (with good enough genetics and lived experiences), can bring us smiling into advanced ages.
For many, one of the best experiences in our older years is being a grandparent. It can also be magical for grandchildren. I have so many fond memories of my grandparents on both sides, especially my grandmothers.
Grandmothers are known to play an evolutionary role in childrearing (Grandmother Hypothesis, Williams, 1957) as the cost of reproduction became greater in aging females. Williams suggested that menopause was naturally selected to allow older females to help their own offspring in child rearing.
Kakunje (2024, p. 141) points out that grandparents “play a pivotal role in passing down cultural values, rituals, and customs, enriching their grandchildren’s sense of identity and belonging." Grandparents also “provide emotional support, life experiences, and caregiving support and serve as role models [and] like parents, grandparents love unconditionally, which helps a child feel safe and secure.”
Many children are raised by grandparents when their own parents are unable or unavailable. Grandparents also help take care of kids when both parents are working. But not every child has the benefit of a relationship with a grandparent, especially if the parent did not experience positive parenting themselves.
I encourage all of us to reflect on the role grandparents played in our own development and try to come up with positive memories. What did we learn from our grandparents in childhood? What did grandparents implicitly show us about living?
Although I didn’t know my paternal grandfather very well, my father’s mother was always in our lives. My grandmother, Ivah Jane O’Dell Paul, was born in 1833, the oldest of 17 children. She was married to my grandfather, a farmer in Stet, Missouri, and they lived in a house in the middle of a cornfield. Gramma called the house Mockingbird Hill, and it was across the road from the Stet Cemetery that had many ‘Paul’ tombstones.
When we visited my grandmother, everything was different than the city life we were used to. My Gramma pumped water from a well every morning. We also had to use an outhouse; in this case, one that was down a path that was guarded by two mean guinea hens who flew up in your face as you tried to run by.
Personally, I held it as long as I could rather than face the guinea hens.
Visiting Gramma every summer was wonderful. We ran loose on the farm. When I was 6, I was proud to be in charge of gathering the eggs in the hen house. Unbeknownst to me, Gramma apparently killed one of the chickens for dinner leaving me completely shocked that our 'fried chicken' came from one of the hens I had just made friends with!
Then there was the huge vat at the side of the house. Gramma lit a fire underneath and washed clothes in it. One day, Gramma decided to give us three kids a bath in this pot. She put us all in and began scrubbing us down…I seriously thought we were getting cooked.
I have many fond memories of Gramma. She told us that she came across the Santa Fe Trail with two kids in a covered wagon from Oklahoma to Missouri. She had quilting parties in her living room where women would gather and hand quilt on huge frames. Gramma also made "feather-bed" mattresses from hen feathers she collected, which leads me to another one of my fears.
Gramma was a biggish woman who slept in the 'feather-bed' in the living room. Since I was the oldest kid, I was chosen to sleep with Gramma while my sibs slept on the floor with my parents upstairs in the only other bed. I was always afraid she would roll over on me (because it had no form whatsoever) so clung to the bed frame all night.
On another trip when I was 7, we came for my Grandfather's funeral. On this trip, I was allowed to sleep on the floor with my sibs next to my parents (thank God!). Unbeknownst to me, my Grandfather's casket was rolled into the living room where Gramma and I usually slept.
As I came downstairs. Gramma saw my shocked face, and said, "He’s asleep.” I said to myself, “He’s Dead” and wondered why he would be asleep wearing a suit with makeup on! Anyway, it introduced a new idea when sleeping with Gramma, "Maybe she would die in her sleep, and I will roll onto her!" Real gripping on that bed frame!
Another fabulous memory was connected with the hand-cranked wall phone and Myrtle, the switchboard operator. Gramma picked up the receiver and asked Myrtle to call so-and-so after she asked how Myrtle and kids were doing. Since we had seen Gramma make these calls all the time, we (me and sibs) decided to try it. Before we got that far, we heard voices and discovered that it was a party-line...so we periodically listened in quietly to all kinds of conversations...accept when we tried to hide a burst of laughter!
Gramma told me of the time my Grandfather came home with one of the first cars, a Ford Model T. She took it for a test drive, but as she told it, she forgot to ask how to make it stop and instead a tree did it for her!
As it turns out, Gramma was also a wonderful writer, a poet actually. Her verve for Life seems to have been passed down to my father, also a writer/scholar, and perhaps to me. I was also equally influenced by my maternal Norwegian grandparents in a different way, but that is another story for another time. The point is, the importance of understanding what we genetically inherit as well as what we implicitly or epigenetically inherit and learn. No matter what difficulty was in our lived early experiences, there is always some ‘gold’ to be mined.
My friend Glenis forwarded me the above picture. She believes it might have come from a Facebook page. I immediately thought if there was a dragon scooter available, my Gramma would be on it!
We, and all of our Children need this.
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