Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Quotes

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.

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.

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.