Grandparents And Grandchildren Quotes

The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.

Make up your mind to this. If you are different, you are isolated, not only from people of your own age but from those of your parents' generation and from your children's generation too. They'll never understand you and they'll be shocked no matter what you do. But your grandparents would probably be proud of you and say: 'There's a chip off the old block,' and your grandchildren will sigh enviously and say: 'What an old rip Grandma must have been!' and they'll try to be like you.

Grandchildren are their grandparents' toys.

You make all your mistakes with your own children so by the time your grandchildren arrive, you know how to get it right. Plus, once you turn fifty, you kind of stop giving a shit what others think.

A Grandmother thinks of her grandchildren day and night, even when they are not with her.She will always love them more than anyone would understand.

They claimed it was for the sake of their grandparents and grandchildren, but it was of course for the sake of their grandparent’s grandchildren, and their grandchildren’s grandparents.

Sometimes family trauma skips a generation altogether and redoubles its hold on the following one. You may encounter grandchildren who silently shoulder the hurts and sufferings of their grandparents.

She loved them so much that she felt a kind of hollowness on the inner surface of her arms whenever she looked at them- an ache of longing to pull them close and hold them tight against her.

Some things, however, should happen in the correct order. Shoes go on after socks. Peanut butter is applied after the bread comes out of the toaster, not before. And grandchildren are born after their grandparents.

They will all vanish at the same time, like the millions of images that lay behind the foreheads of the grandparents, dead for half a century, and of the parents, also dead. Images in which we appeared as a little girl in the midst of beings who died before we were born, just as in our own memories our small children are there next to our parents and schoolmates. And one day we’ll appear in our children’s memories, among their grandchildren and people not yet born. Like sexual desire, memory never stops. It pairs the dead with the living, real with imaginary beings, dreams with history.

Kids are hard -they drive you crazy and break your heart- whereas grandchildren make you feel great about life, and yourself, and your ability to love someone unconditionally, finally, after all these years.

As a subconscious attempt to add meaning or purpose to their life: The unemployed pray for a job; the retired pray for grandchildren.

For their holidays: the rich’s kids travel the world; the poor’s kids roam around their grandparents’ yard.

V drifts into talking about generations. How grandparents and grandchildren so often get along very well. Remove one generation—twenty-five years at least—and the anger in both directions dissipates. All the failed expectations and betrayals become cleansed by an intervention of time. Resentment and bitter need for retribution fall away. Love becomes the operative emotion.

Grandparents enjoy most the company of their grandchildren. For with them, they experience the miracle of being 10 again.

Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy - the mother.

Baseball, more than any other sport, has a magical way of connecting fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren and ancestors back down the line. - From The Brooklyn Nine

the children and grandchildren of famine-starved individuals tended to develop metabolic illnesses, as if their genomes carried some recollection of their grandparents’ metabolic travails.

In your life, right here and now, things like mermaids, fairies, witches and monsters are nothing but fairytales told to your grandchildren and stories you heard from your own grandparents as children. They exist only in your imagination. Did you ever think that there is a chance all this was once real, that it all existed? Perhaps yes, but you would then consider such thoughts irrational, that even if you were to believe it and try telling someone they would think you for mad. In my world those creatures are real – I’m real, and I am here to tell you of a story that happened in eons past in the majestic island of Aster." - Queen of Merfolk Asteria - Ninemia

It seems to me that sometimes the worst parents make the best grandparents. I'm not sure why. Maybe because there is enough of a generational separation that they don't see their grandchildren as an extension of themselves, so their relationship isn't tainted by any self-loathing. And of course, just growing older seems to soften and relax people. Since so many people these days don't seem to start their families until around age forty, I predict there will be less child beating, but more slipped disks from lifting babies out of cribs. Even the father of advanced age who's not inclined to spare the rod is likely to suffer more than his victim: The first punch he throws might well be the last straw for his rotator cuff, reducing his disciplinary options to mere verbal abuse and napping. I'm excited about the next generation!

The world is in me and you are not even in the world yet.

Today, children and grandchildren tell their grandparents about war, and not the other way around.

. . . and when nanas die they leave grandchildren and perhaps a trace memory of being coddled, kissed, attended to, and loved, of being chased across the lawn or rocked in the middle of the night or taken seriously. In Nanaville there is always in the back of my mind the understanding that I am building a memory out of spare parts and that, someday, that memory will be all that's left of me.

V drifts into talking about generations. How grandparents and grandchildren so often get along very well. Remove one generation—twenty-five years at least—and the anger in both directions dissipates. All the failed expectations and betrayals become cleansed by an intervention of time. Resentment and bitter need for retribution fall away. Love becomes the operative emotion. On the old side, you’re left with wrinkled age and whatever fractured, end-of-the-line knowledge might have accrued. Wisdom as exhaustion. And on the other side—which V still remembers with molecular vividness—youth and yearning and urgency for something not yet fully defined. Undiluted hope and desire. But by fusing the best of both sides, a kind of intertwining consciousness arises—grandmother and granddaughter wisdom emerging from shared hope, relieved of emotions tainted by control and guilt and anger. —I’ll assume you’re right, James says. But I wouldn’t know much about long family relationships. When I was

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man . . .” Evie chanted as she played with Stephen in the Challons’ private railway carriage. They occupied one side of a deep upholstered settee, with Sebastian lounging in the other corner. The baby clapped his tiny hands along with his grandmother, his rapt gaze fastened on her face. “Make me a cake as fast as you can . . .” The nursery rhyme concluded, and Evie cheerfully began again. “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake—” “My sweet,” Sebastian interrupted, “we’ve been involved in the manufacture of cakes ever since we set foot on the train. For my sanity, I beg you to choose another game.” “Stephen,” Evie asked her grandson, “do you want to play peekaboo?” “No,” came the baby’s grave answer. “Do you want to play ‘beckoning the chickens?’” “No.” Evie’s impish gaze flickered to her husband before she asked the child, “Do you want to play horsie with Gramps?” “Yes!” Sebastian grinned ruefully and reached for the boy. “I knew I should have kept quiet.” He sat Stephen on his knee and began to bounce him, making him squeal with delight.

We’re engaging in a set of activities which go way beyond the individual life span, way beyond children, grandchildren, way beyond parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, to the whole frame of at least civilizational life. Once you get comfortable with that, then you start to go further out still, to three and a half billion years of life on Earth, and maybe we’ll do another three and a half billion years. That’s kind of interesting to try to hold in your mind. And once you’ve held it in your mind, what do you do on Monday?

There are really only two commandments of Nanaville: love the grandchildren, and hold your tongue.

there will be much personal misery . . . if fertility is so low that four grandparents must share one grandchild, and if lots of grandparents don’t have grandchildren.

I think that mere distance cannot break the bond between grandparents and their grandchildren.

I gave him my full American pitch: about how America was a large experiment, and with every generation we struggle to expand and live up to our greatest ideals, to be greater in the future than we were in the past. I told him I fought for my country because I love it, flaws and all. I fought for it because the people who make up our beautiful, diverse tapestry deserve to be fought for. I fought for it so that this experiment can continue, so that we have a chance to become the country that my grandparents dreamed of and that my grandchildren deserve.

Within the biblical worldview (which has not so much been disproved as ignored in much modern thought), heaven and earth overlap, and do so at certain specific times and places, Jesus and the Spirit being the key markers. In the same way, at certain places and moments God's future and God's past (that is, events like Jesus's death and resurrection) arrive in the present--rather as though you were to sit down to a meal and discover your great-great-grandparents, and also your great-great-grandchildren, turning up to join you. That's how God's time works.

We are individually preoccupied by the lives of those we know and expect to know: our grandparents, parents, children, and, if we are lucky, grandchildren. Which is why it is so fantastically difficult for us to recognize that in our frenzied attempt to keep nearly eight billion people fed, watered, clothed, sheltered, and distracted, we are fundamentally altering the geophysical composition of the planet at a pace previously caused only by cataclysmic events, like the massive asteroid that smashed into eastern Mexico, wiping out the dinosaurs, sixty-five million years ago.

Granny flats are misnamed. They were once intended for older relatives, so they can live near their adult children and grandchildren. Hence the appellation. Down in the lowlands of Boomertown, there are many such little residences. But they’re not for grannies. Instead, the buildings should be called ‘children and grandchildren emergency shelters’ because that’s what they’ve become. Whole families cram themselves into a few dozen square metres of space and meanwhile, the grandparents stay in the big main house, rattling around their many empty rooms like rubber balls in a vast squash court.

Arteriosclerosis, removing people from active life when the period of maximum fertility has passed, is of benefit to the young if it relieves them of the care of parents, or brings them an inheritance as they enter adult life. . . . Any attempts to eradicate such a disease from the urban population will be frustrated by natural selection and the survival of more grandchildren in families with few grandparents. Those best fitted to survive in a world growing more urban are those who cease to require support as soon as their roles as parents have been completed. Atherosclerosis and hypertension are now the chief factors in determining that we do not overstay our allotted span of life too long.

Of course, the cadavers, in life, donated themselves freely to this fate, and the language surrounding the bodies in front of us soon changed to reflect that fact. We were instructed to no longer call them “cadavers”; “donors” was the preferred term. And yes, the transgressive element of dissection had certainly decreased from the bad old days. (Students no longer had to bring their own bodies, for starters, as they did in the nineteenth century. And medical schools had discontinued their support of the practice of robbing graves to procure cadavers—that looting itself a vast improvement over murder, a means once common enough to warrant its own verb: burke, which the OED defines as “to kill secretly by suffocation or strangulation, or for the purpose of selling the victim’s body for dissection.”) Yet the best-informed people—doctors—almost never donated their bodies. How informed were the donors, then? As one anatomy professor put it to me, “You wouldn’t tell a patient the gory details of a surgery if that would make them not consent.” Even if donors were informed enough—and they might well have been, notwithstanding one anatomy professor’s hedging—it wasn’t so much the thought of being dissected that galled. It was the thought of your mother, your father, your grandparents being hacked to pieces by wisecracking twenty-two-year-old medical students. Every time I read the pre-lab and saw a term like “bone saw,” I wondered if this would be the session in which I finally vomited. Yet I was rarely troubled in lab, even when I found that the “bone saw” in question was nothing more than a common, rusty wood saw. The closest I ever came to vomiting was nowhere near the lab but on a visit to my grandmother’s grave in New York, on the twentieth anniversary of her death. I found myself doubled over, almost crying, and apologizing—not to my cadaver but to my cadaver’s grandchildren. In the midst of our lab, in fact, a son requested his mother’s half-dissected body back. Yes, she had consented, but he couldn’t live with that. I knew I’d do the same. (The remains were returned.) In

Queens. I found dozens of my counterparts, from my generation, whose lives were shaped by the past—these are the other grandchildren, those who, like me, remain drawn in by our grandparents’ stories, what they survived, what they lived through, that enabled us to be who we are, that enabled our very existence. We aren’t alone in our desire to know more, to pass something on. I have looked for Valy through the birth of two children now; it is hard not to wonder at the privilege of that opportunity. And yet—they are all dying, our eyewitnesses. Our connections. We, the grandchildren, have these stories we have all collected. What will our own children know of these stories? What do we want them to know? It is not the same as hearing it from the witnesses themselves. But it will have to be something. It is important that we have one another. It’s not possible to remember alone.

The family is not of man's making; it is a gift of God and full of life. Upbringing in the family bears a quite special character. No school or educational institution can replace or compensate for the family. "Everything educates in the family, the handshake of the father, the voice of the mother, the older brother, the younger sister, the baby in the cradle, the sick loved one, the grandparents and the grandchildren, the uncles and the aunts, the guests and friends, prosperity and adversity, the feast day and the day of mourning, Sundays and workdays, the prayer and the thanksgiving at the table and the reading of God's Word, the morning and evening prayer. Everything is engaged to educate one another, from day to day, from hour to hour, unintentionally, without previously devised plan, method or system. From everything proceeds an educative influence though it can neither be analyzed nor calculated. A thousand insignificant things, a thousand trifles, a thousand details, all have their effect. It is life itself that here educates, life in its greatness, the rich, inexhaustible, universal life. The family is the school of life, because there is its spring and its hearth.' In A.B.W.M. Kok, Herman Bavinck, Amsterdam, 1945, pp. 1819.]

The median age in Gaza is very young. Earlier you spoke of asking your father for stories about your grandfather, and how important that was for you. But there are fewer and fewer people who have memories of life outside of Gaza. I’m wondering if you can say something about this. Unfortunately, it’s not only about memories of our grandparents, but it’s also their memories that are being lost, those are what we need to hear and memorize and then transmit to our children and grandchildren. But I’m also so saddened to think about my generation, our memories, being required or expected to tell our own stories of what happened to us in Gaza. I mean, for example, in 2021, 2014, 2009, or 2008. All the massacres and attacks on Gaza. Maybe our grandchildren will not ask us about Jaffa and Acre and Haifa. No, they will ask us about the 2014 war. What happened to you? What did you eat, which of your friends was wounded, did you leave your home, where did you go? This is a prolonged state of exile and estrangement and expulsion and ethnic cleansing. Our grandparents were driven from their homes and their cities, and any trace of them has been erased and replaced by something else, which is now called Israel. But we, their descendants, were also robbed of our right to dream and think about those places—no, instead, we are forced to live in the nightmares of our own current life. And they are creating more misery for us, wounding us again and again, so that we forget those earlier wounds in the face of the fresher wounds. The more the Israelis attack us, the more they are trying to erase the older memories. So it also becomes a matter of exhaustion.

Today, as I walked my dog on a cool clear morning, I realized that if I live long enough, I may see my grandchildren grow into adults. Someday they might become my young friends. This hope keeps me going. Jane Isay

Today, as I walked my dog on a cool clear morning, I realized that if I live long enough, I may see my grandchildren grow into adults. Someday they might become my young friends. This hope keeps me going.

Encouraging grandchildren to follow their dreams, despite the worries the other adults in their lives might harbor, is one of the pleasures of being a grandparent. We empower them when we bake together, garden together, write books together, teach them to knit and crochet, and stop cheating at cards to let them win as a nod to their becoming more grown up. We empower them in Grandpa’s garage workshop when they hammer their first nail and saw their first piece of wood. Sometimes we let them see their own strengths even though we don’t have a lesson plan.

Introduction This book is devoted to the blessed Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Daily working together as unified Godhead for our best interest. Would be incomplete without Jesus direct love bestowed upon me, through a perpetual act of faith in God. Fully trusting Jesus to lead me into a carefully laid-out plan. Dedicating this book to my children: Faith is 6, Christian 11, Christina 12 years old. Izzabella, my niece, is also featured in the story, Sally Saved Three Times. These Children are the inspiration for the characters in the stories. Added some personal experiences acquired during my childhood. Appreciate the support of my Mom, Dad, brother, Jacob, for being here for me the last five years. They helped me through hard circumstances when I needed them the most. Thank You! My second family is at the Erie Wesleyan Methodist Church on the corner of 29th and Liberty. They covered my life with prayer; great friends from the Lord; Supporting me on my journey towards my heavenly home. I am also thankful for Mike Lawrence who encouraged me to keep writing. Thanks, brother! This spectacular close friend of mine wrote the Forward of this book. He is God-given for moral support and prayer. Friends forever from Erie, Pennsylvania! There are scripture references, along with Bible lessons featured in each story. These short stories are ideal for devotions or bedtime stories. Suitable for parents and grandparents to read to children, grandchildren. Forward It is rare today to find Christians who are in love with doing the Lord's service. Many would sit to the side and let others bush-wack the path, but Bryan has always been the one who delights in making the way clear for others. His determination, commitment to producing these writings was encouraging to watch come to fruition. Take time now see for yourself how God is directing these works to provide something sincere, pure, innocent for families to enjoy. A pleasant respite from a sin-sick world. So, please, feel free to find a quiet place today and enjoy them alone or with your family. This body of work calls upon us to take time to be holy. I believe with all my heart that this is the authors intent, the Lord's plan, my hearts prayer that they bless you as much as they have blessed me. May God bless the time and energies sacrificed by the author in its production. Sincerely in Christ, Michael Lawrence. When writing with Shirley Dye on messenger about editing the book, she commented that this book would be a blessing to many people. That is my solemn humble prayer. Short Story Content 1. Mr. B.G. (My Testimony) 2. Trevor Wins Three Times 3. Winning The Man ON Rock-Hill 4. Sally Saved Three Times 5. Jonathan and Family Find God 6. Upright and Prideful Key Text, (Matthew 18:3), “And (Jesus) said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Ariely’s book clearly gives empirical verification for what you and I know happens all the time. Here is a tiny example I hope you cannot relate to: Ariely says, “Over the course of many years of teaching, I have noticed that there typically seems to be a rash of deaths among students’ relatives at the end of the semester. It happens mostly in the week before final exams and before papers are due.” Guess which relative most often dies? Grandma. I am not making this stuff up. Mike Adams, a professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, has done research on this. He has shown that grandmothers are ten times more likely to die before a midterm and nineteen times more likely to die before a final exam. Worse, grandmothers of students who are not doing well in class are at even higher risk. Students who are failing are fifty times more likely to lose Grandma than nonfailing students. It turns out that the greatest predictor of mortality among senior citizens in our day ends up being their grandchildren’s GPAs. The moral of all this is, if you are a grandparent, do not let your grandchild go to college. It’ll kill you, especially if he or she is intellectually challenged.

In June, 1957, Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Communist Party boss, was interviewed before a nation-wide American television audience. With calm assurance he stated: “. . . I can prophesy that your grandchildren in America will live under socialism. And please do not be afraid of that. Your grandchildren will not understand how their grandparents did not understand the progressive nature of a socialist society.

If you keep these needs in the forefront of your mind as you work to be a blessing giver to your grandchildren, you will do wonders for their relationship with their parents, their view of themselves, their relationships to the people around them, and their attitude toward God. The three needs every child is born with are: • a secure love • a significant purpose • a sufficient hope

I had believed that it was just a matter of looking, of trying hard enough. But suddenly, finding a single person among the billions of people who have lived and are living on this planet seemed absurd. Perhaps it was naive to believe that people leave marks on the world, that we are not churned back int the earth like dead leaves in a compost pile. I had heard once that in a hundred millions years, all buildings will be gone. Paper will exist, but the ink will vanish, so everything will be blank. Eternal blankness - forever. Why resist if that is our fate? I didn't even know my own great-grandparents' names. They had lived entire complex lives, had careers, had created homes and raised children. They had wanted things. Their children had known about them, their grandchildren less so but still some, and I knew nothing.

But the Seventh Generation idea, articulated more than 300 years ago in the Iroquois Gayanashagowa (the “Great Binding Law” or “Great Law of Peace” 9 ), remains as radical and visionary as ever: that leaders should take actions only after contemplating their likely effects on “the unborn of the future Nation . . . whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground.” Seven generations, perhaps a century and a half, is longer than a single lifetime but not beyond human experience. It is the span from one’s great-grandparents to one’s great-grandchildren. From the standpoint of the Seven Generations principle , our current society is a kleptocracy stealing from the future. What would it take for this old idea to be adopted in a modern world that does not even acknowledge time?

Missing those all-important life events like weddings and grandchildren, not celebrating the victories and special experiences or being there to offer support and share the tears of painful circumstances that were sure to invade the lives of those I loved. My grandparents and parents were supposed to die before me. Leaving behind all the precious people in my life would be my greatest regret. I was a wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend. I couldn’t imagine not being

People say that grandparents love their grandchildren unconditionally, but to Yoshiro, Tomo was a tree that bore only the fruits of anxiety, leaving little time for love, unconditional or otherwise.

It is the dream of parents and grandparents that their children and grandchildren have a better lot in life: better experiences and more opportunities. That was my dream for my children, and now it’s my dream for my grandchildren. I have seen that having the gospel in your life as a youth and living it opens doors of opportunities that allow more to be accomplished. The gospel provides more protection against the generational curses that seem to plague people.

Grampa pulled off his lucky hat and sank into the recliner. Before long, he was snoring like a rusty hymn. 'Zzzzzz . . .' Uncle Leonard tossed Ray over one shoulder and hauled him into the kitchen, where the smell of frying bacon filled the air. 'Any fish today?” Aunt Wilhelmina asked. 'Yes, ma’am,” Ray said, 'but that’s not all we caught.' Uncle Leonard sat Ray down. 'What else was there?” 'Something bigger' is all that Ray would say.

Why are grandparents and grandchildren close to each other?” “Because they have a common enemy in between…

separated by a thousand miles. Absentee love. The distance created a regret my mother has only recently expressed. Five grandchildren have grown up seeing their grandparents only for a few days in the summertime and on the occasional Christmas visit. Love was given and received on the telephone, in thank-you notes, in well wishes after graduations and traditional holidays. It was abiding but fleeting.

one of the most important jobs of grandchildren is to make sure their grandparents do a lot of laughing.

God is who He says He is. God can do what He says He can do. I am who God says I am. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me God’s Word is alive and active in me.

On the contrary, if grandparents want to make a positive difference in their grandchildren’s lives, they must have a plan.

grandparents expected and demanded noiseless obedience and the grandchildren were afraid of them.

politically correct claptrap for ‘extremely messed up’. Most of the children in Jessie’s class were the product of appalling neglect, both mental and physical, and abuse, also both mental and physical. They were the children of alcoholics and drug-addicted parents, of parents who spent half their lives in jail, the rest of the time trying to spend their welfare on booze, weed and crystal meth. That was if they even had parents to speak of. Many of Jessie’s pupils were being reared by their grandparents; sad, tired, ill-equipped people whose hearts were in the right place, even if they did not have the wherewithal to help their grandchildren in ways other than to feed and house them. Jessie lifted a pop-up picture book from under a desk and slotted it into what they romantically called ‘the library’, though it was little more than two shelves of tattered books bought and

the grandchildren of the civil rights pioneers from the 1950s were as scared to vote, because of prisons and the threat of prisons, as their grandparents were half a century ago because of the threat of the lynch mob.

Finding Favor in God’s Eyes Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD…. Noah did everything just as God commanded him. —GENESIS 6:8,22     One way to find favor with God is to love His little children. In the New Testament we read where Jesus loved the young children and warned us as adults to be careful not to harm the little children. As a grandparent, I can gain favor with God by being kind and gentle with the little ones in our family. What an honor to be a part of the spiritual development of any child. In government, sports, business, medicine, education, theater, and music—there are those who rise to the top of their professions and are honored because they find favor through their actions, personalities, efforts, or sometimes just because of their social connections. They might be known for very amazing and noble accomplishments like running a nonprofit, discovering a new cancer drug, teaching those thought unteachable, or singing the most beautiful aria the world has ever heard. These are all remarkable reasons to have favor among men. But have you ever thought how much richer life would be to have God find favor with you as a parent, a grandparent? I stand in awe when I think of God finding favor with me, but He does. Noah lived in a world much like today’s, a world full of sin. Humanity hasn’t changed much over the centuries—we just give sin a different name. Yet through all this wickedness, Noah was a person who lived a godly life. His life was pleasing to God even during those evil days. Noah didn’t find favor because of his individual goodness but through his obedience to God. We are also judged according to the same standard—that of our personal faith and obedience. Even though Noah was upright and blameless before God, he wasn’t perfect. God recognized that Noah’s life reflected a genuine faith, but not always a perfect faith. Do you sometimes feel all alone in your walk with God? I know I do. Noah found that it wasn’t the surroundings of his life that kept him in close fellowship with God, but it was the heart of Noah that qualified him to find friendship with God. It isn’t important to find favor from our fellow humans. God’s favor is so much more rewarding. Somehow God’s favor with me is passed down through the favor from my grandchildren. As we live in this very difficult time of history, I might ask, “Do I find favor in God’s sight?” God gives us grace to live victoriously: “He gives us more grace” (James 4:6).

Visit grandma. The relationship between grandparents and grandchildren is almost magical. Foster that with plenty of visits.

We’ll never make it three months. Do you have any of the details worked out?” “Well,” she said. “Sure. Some.” He leaned toward her and smiled pleasantly. “Care to share?” “What would you like to know?” “Well, there’s nothing to suggest we have a high-risk pregnancy, but it’s pretty common for the mothers of twins to go on bed rest for a while to delay labor while they grow and get stronger. And when babies come, it’s often early and fast. And taking care of them as newborns is pretty demanding. Also, you have a financial situation that’s giving you some stress. And—” “Okay, okay,” she said. “Sheesh. I’m not too worried about bed rest, I’m in good health and I have Vanni and Mel. John Stone is watching real close for early and fast. My mom will come as soon as they arrive and—” “So will mine,” he said, and she actually grabbed her belly. “What?” “Oh yeah. We can hold her off for a week, maybe, but these are her grandchildren and she’s never missed a grandchild’s debut.” “Have you told her?” she asked, aghast. “Not yet,” he said, twirling a little spaghetti around his fork. “But I have to do that. It’s going to be hard enough to explain not telling her sooner and making sure she had a chance to meet you. They’re not just our children, Ab. They have grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins…et cetera…on my side of this family as well as yours.” “Oh God,” she said, dropping her fork. “I don’t feel so good.” He just laughed lightly. “Relax. Nothing to worry about. They’re fantastic people and you’ll be real happy to have them in your life, I guarantee it.” “But won’t they think… I mean, we’re not married and—” He shrugged, got up and fetched himself a beer from the old refrigerator, using the underside of his heavy class ring to pop the top. “I’m sure they’ve heard of things like this before. A man and woman, not married, having children. But telling my family is just one item on this list. Abby, the list is long. We have so many things to work through before you go into labor. And not all that much time to do it.” She

Mother's brothers Solomon, Louis, Meyer, Max and Morris had been already well established in New York before the war. They made my grandparents' passage possible through Romania. They stayed a few months in our house before their departure in 1920. I was a few months old then. My Mother never saw her parents again. Grandfather died in New York of Buerger's disease, a consequence of years of heavy smoking. He lived just eight months in the United States. My own Father's fate was similar. He died of cancer about eight months after his arrival in America. Both of them lived through hard years of wandering and homelessness during the world wars and survived but could not enjoy the ensuing peace, could not share life with children and grandchildren. They lived through the wars, yet peace was not theirs to savor.

fewer and fewer people live in intergenerational households, and older people are more often treated as a burden rather than a valued member of the family. This mindset is a disadvantage for children and grandchildren as well as grandparents: various studies show that regular contact with elders can lead younger people to develop more positive views of aging. As those children reach adulthood and middle age, those experiences will help them to remember what healthy aging can look like.

Unlike most of the other economic changes I’ve discussed, like shareholder supremacy and ending antitrust and defeating organized labor, this wasn’t part of the original strategy of big business and the right. But for them it isn’t exactly collateral damage either, because it has been a political boon. So far they’ve brilliantly managed to redirect the anger of most of the (white) left-behinds to keep them voting Republican, by reminding them that they should resent the spoiled college-educated liberal children and grandchildren of the acid amnesty abortion liberal elite who turned on them and their parents and grandparents in the 1970s.

in the week before final exams and before papers are due.” Guess which relative most often dies? Grandma. I am not making this stuff up. Mike Adams, a professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, has done research on this. He has shown that grandmothers are ten times more likely to die before a midterm and nineteen times more likely to die before a final exam. Worse, grandmothers of students who are not doing well in class are at even higher risk. Students who are failing are fifty times more likely to lose Grandma than nonfailing students. It turns out that the greatest predictor of mortality among senior citizens in our day ends up being their grandchildren’s GPAs. The moral of all this is, if you are a grandparent, do not let

If families resemble trees, as they say, arborescent structures with entangled roots and individual branches jutting out at awkward angles, family traumas are like thick, translucent resin dripping from a cut in the bark. They trickle down generations. They ooze down slowly, a flow so slight as to be imperceptible, moving across time and space, until they find a crack in which to settle and coagulate. The path of an inherited trauma is random; you never know who might get it, but someone will. Among children growing up under the same roof, some are affected by it more than others. Have you ever met a pair of siblings who have had more or less the same opportunities, and yet one is more melancholic and reclusive? It happens. Sometimes family trauma skips a generation altogether and redoubles its hold on the following one. You may encounter grandchildren who silently shoulder the hurts and sufferings of their grandparents.

When people say that we should preserve things for our grandchildren I’m fairly unmoved anyway. If the grandkids are anything like their grandparents, they don’t deserve it and will set about ruining it with the same short-sightedness and greed that their forebears did.

When I think about the history of slavery and racism in this country, I think about how quick we are to espouse notions of progress without accounting for its uncertain and serpentine path. I think of how decades of racial violence have shaped everything we see, but sometimes I find myself forgetting its impact on those right beside me. I forget that many of the men and women who spat on the Little Rock Nine are still alive. I forget that so many of the people who threw rocks at Dr. King are still voting in our elections. I forget that, but for the arbitrary nature of circumstance, what happened to Emmett Till could have happened to my grandfather. That the children who threw food at my grandmother and called her a nigger are likely bouncing their own great-grandchildren on their laps. That the people who lynched a man in my grandfather's town may have had children who inherited their parents' hatred. That the woman who stood alongside the Obamas to officially open the National Museum of African American History and Culture was the daughter of a man born into slavery. My grandfather's grandfather was born into slavery, while my grandmother's grandfather was born at its edge. We tell ourselves that the most nefarious displays of racial violence happened long ago, when they were in fact not so long ago at all. These images and videos that appall our twenty-first-century sensibilities are filled with people who are still among us. There are people still alive today who knew and held and loved people who were born into slavery. I do not misunderstand the language of progress. Though I realize that I do not yet have all the words to discuss a crime that is still unfolding. But I do know that spending the day with my grandparents in a museum documenting the systemic and interpersonal violence they witnessed the hand that beat them and the laws that said it was okay reminded me that in the long arc of the universe, even the most explicit manifestations of racism happened a short time ago.

Alexandra Senfft, the granddaughter of a Nazi war criminal and the author of a foreword to Kriegskinder, a book of childhood memories of the Second World War says: What the Kriegskinder did not come to terms with they passed on to us grandchildren. Psychologists have found that many grandchildren internalized their grandparents’ experience even if the Nazi era was never spoken of. Grandchildren thus often possess the family memory without having experienced the events themselves.

Grandchildren are the dessert course of life, or, as Steve Leber, who

a quiet and compassionate temperament, sensitive to the natural flow of life • an untroubled life characterised by very strong family ties with extended families composed of great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, children and grandchildren who take care of each other.

We and our parents and grandparents, our children and grandchildren, are the ones who are sent to manufactured wars where we die. For what? For what we believe to be a righteous cause, never realizing we have been sent to the killing fields by a small group of psychopaths who are motivated only by greed and their lust for power. Because

We wish grandparents would remember these two truths about grandchildren: 1. They are NOT your children; 2. They ARE your grandchildren. The first truth seems obvious, and yet forgetting it can cause untold problems. Because you are not their parents, you should never overstep the right and authority of the parents. This means that you need to consult their parents before you give or loan them money, let them to events, or make extravagant plans. Similarly, talk to the parents before you give the grandchildren major advice. Your failure to respect parental authority can create extreme conflict between you and your adult children.

So let’s allow ourselves to imagine that the attention and love we give our grandchildren can help them grow and eventually help to mend our troubled world.

She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America,” I said. “They’re not famous. Their names aren’t in the newspapers. But each and every day they work hard. They look after their families. They sacrifice for their children and their grandchildren. They aren’t seeking the limelight—all they try to do is just do the right thing. “And in this crowd, there are a lot of quiet heroes like that—mothers and fathers, grandparents, who have worked hard and sacrificed all their lives. And the satisfaction that they get is seeing that their children and maybe their grandchildren or their great-grandchildren live a better life than they did. “That’s what America’s about. That’s what we’re fighting for.” It was as good a closing argument for the campaign as I felt that I could give.—

When a child is born, he is the closest he will ever be to the image of God.”26 Jesus also said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matt. 19:14). As a grandparent, you have the privilege of furthering God’s kingdom through the legacy you leave with your grandchildren. An incredible calling indeed! As I mentioned previously, I’ve done several focus groups and spoken to thousands of parents about doing life with adult children. Sometimes the atmosphere is tense

Grandchildren are the dessert course of life, or, as Steve Leber, who founded Grandparents.com, told me, “God gave us grandchildren to make up for aging.” Ain’t it the truth.

Grandparents who show a great interest in their grandchildren are among the most precious people on this earth. What

True laziness is being excited when plans get canceled.” -- Unknown “Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy – the parents.” -- Unknown “There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.” – Steven Wright

I liken mothers who help raise their grandchildren as the empty pages and white spaces inside a book, the extra pages at the beginning and end of the books, the white space found at the end of chapters. Readers flip through these sections, unaware of the necessary roles these spaces play in the construction of the story itself, these vital, invisible parts that hold the story together. Most readers unconsciously disregard these blank spaces, choosing instead to focus on the story's visible drama and characters, unaware that empty pages and spaces serve to mold a story into a meaning retelling. White space in a book frames its story.

Plus I have no doubt that their garden is also where my grandparents dreamed—for a better life of equality for their grandchildren and future generations. As people rooted in their faith, they probably did a lot of praying here as well, that God would deliver us all to prosperity and peace beyond this plot of land.