Grandmas and Grandpas like to take grandchildren to the zoo to see the elephants and the deer and the monkeys. They also like to take grandchildren to the park to ride on the merry-go-round, and to the lake to throw bread to the ducks and the geese and the swans.
On the way home from the zoo or the park, Grandmas and Grandpas take grandchildren to the bakery. There, they stand at the counter and smell the fresh bread, and buy cookies and cakes for desserts.
Grandmas and Grandpas like to play games with grandchildren, listen to grandchildren tell what happened in the park and at school, and answer questions. They especially like to read stories to grandchildren from big books with lots of pictures.
Grandmas and Grandpas like to hold grandchildren in their laps and hug them. Grandpas also like to shake hands, or pat grandchildren on their heads. That is a little bit about Grandmas and Grandpas and Grandchildren.
Too-Faraway Grandparent
During a talk I gave to a senior citizens group a woman in the audience remarked, 'I'm a volunteer helper in a class of first graders at (naming a nearby school.) I haven't given it much thought until now, but I've come to realize that some youngsters see their grandparents regularly, others rarely, and still others see their grandparents not at all. For a few, grandparents live too far away, and others don't know where their grandparents live or even if they have grandparents, but saddest of all are the kids who don't know what grandparents are.'
Grandparents and grandchildren are natural allies, but when their homes are too far apart, or other barriers intervene, their alliance weakens. Everybody loses, including the youngsters' parents-the generation in the middle.
How My Stories Began
I live in one city, my grandchildren in another almost a thousand miles distant. During one of my visits I took my, then, three-year-old granddaughter for a stroll. We paused to examine a spider's web spanning a space between two shrubs. A rain shower had passed shortly before and droplets festooned the web's strands and rainbow-sparkled in the morning sunlight. Standing there, both of us bent forward peering into the web, I wove a story that transformed the sparkling strands into a carnival and the spider into an acrobat. Granddaughter's eyes widened with wonder.
We continued on and stopped at a house to observe a cat on the porch playing with a yellow ball. I wove another tale, this time of a cat and a strange ball that bounced too high. Again, my granddaughter's expression showed her pleasure in hearing grandpa's story. For the remainder of my visit, and during subsequent visits, I told her, and when he was old enough, my grandson, of the world around us and how we hoped to, some day, live together on Planet Earth.