It is no secret that grandparents

are some of the most blessed people on the planet. They carry with them

an aura that gives light to the people around them. It is no wonder, nor

is it circumstance, that the distinction comes in the autumn of one's

life.

Grandparenting is a job for

the seasoned and the wise. It is a job for those who have been taught

love, and memory. It is not a job for the hard or hurried.

Grandparents accumulate the

most bittersweet of human emotions, then pour them out like an elixir

in measured doses, as if to set the torch-passing in motion so that we

can take up the role ourselves when the time comes.

As children, we learn from

our grandparents. We learn to do the things that take time and patience,

things that are often too tedious for our parents, busy with our actual

raising, to teach.

From my grandmother I had my

first lessons in cooking. Oh, I learned plenty from my mom, too, but my

grandmother let me plunge my hands in to a bowl of flour to feel its cool,

powdery softness. She let me knead the ground, greasy meat between my

fingers to form a meatloaf. She let me lick the batter from the beaters,

an experience stolen from my own children by fear of contamination, until

the icing, or cookie dough, or cake batter coated my cheeks.

She taught me to sew. We sewed

one wrap-around skirt that was never worn, and never repeated, but nonetheless

etched in my memory.

She taught me to crochet and

cross-stitch. I crocheted a blanket to match the colors of my room, lime

green and yellow, circa 1974. I still have that blanket, and the great

big one she crocheted for me when I was in college. I have also the palest

yellow one that she crocheted for my first child. They are pieces of her,

though I do not have her anymore except in my memory and in my heart.

From my grandfather I learned

to fish, to tend a garden, to swallow down slimy stewed okra and oysters.

For my grandfather, I ate an anchovy so that I could speak with authority

when claiming they were gross.

I learned to play rummy and

poker, to gamble with penny chips, and that you could unfold a paper clip,

stick it in the butt end of a cigarette all the way up, and smoke the

whole thing without a single ash falling. That was a skill we kept to

ourselves.

I learned to bait a hook with

raw shrimp and live worms. I learned that the hottest, softest inland

Florida sand was always cool six inches down.

As an adult I learned that

grown grandparents cry. I learned that grandfathers die slowly from grief

when grandmothers die first. I learned that late in life, people have

a need to share early life experiences, and that we can take from it such

loamy, life knowledge if we listen.

I learned from my grandfather

what is was like for my grandmother to be sent to live with his mother,

with her three young children in tow, when he was called to service near

the end of World War II at the age of 30, after all the younger, abler,

single and childless men had gone and served, and come back or not.

I learned what it was like

to slog through cold wet mushy forests in Germany and Belgium, the smell

of it, the taste of it (he never again ate Spam, even grimaced at the

mention of it), and of the cold dying that he witnessed as 1944 yielded

to 1945 during the Battle of the Bulge.

After my grandmother died,

when he told me these stories, he told me that when he got home from Europe,

my grandmother pulled him into the bathroom of his mother's house to give

him a proper welcome home. I remember blushing with the pride of enlightenment

that grandparents were also men and women, couples with a romantic history

and physical desires that I, as a late century young married twenty-something,

naively thought they were long past, or had never known.

It's been 10 years since he

died, 12 years since my grandmother died, a whole half life for me since

my childhood memories of them were scored. They are as real today as ever,

maybe more so now that I'm older and have really started to think about

life more as one who has lived a fair portion of it, as opposed to one

who is just beginning to live it.

Now I am a witness to that

same transfer of grandness between my parents and my children. I've seen

and felt that primal generational shift that occurs when your parents

hold that small bundle of life that is yours.

I've seen my father whisper

to my 5-year-old that pink and purple are his favorite colors, and seen

her beam with delight and pronounce that those are her favorite colors,

too.

I've seen my mom laugh with

my 13-year-old, at her wit and premature "other" way of looking

at life, and seen the glimmer of recognition that she is a lot like me.

I've seen them both engage

a young boy, something they never did as parents, buy boy toys, boy clothes,

and build boy things.

It is a grand thing to see,

grand indeed.

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