When I was a kid, I remember staying over at my grandparents’ houses over night. I can remember the great toy cubby on the basement landing at the Zimmer place. Grandma Schaefer had this cool little cash register-looking thing with three windows that was my first exposure to a slot machine. It really was cool -- especially sitting on grandma’s lap pushing the key and watching images of fruits and numbers spin to a stop. Grandpa Schaefer’s wood shop was also a wonder. I was enthralled watching him turn a little piece of pine on the lathe into a wheel for one of his famous wheelbarrow planters.
Even though I have good grandparent memories, I surely wouldn’t say I ever felt very close to my grandfolks. They were good people, for sure, but they were not my playmates and I never made the connection between them and the word friend. When I went to their houses I was taught to pretty much entertain myself.
Things are pretty different for me as a grandpa.
When I first became a grandfather twelve years ago, my daughter and grandson lived in another city. She was an hour or so away by car, but not close enough to allow for drop-in visits. Then again, I was still teaching and found myself plenty busy with planning and grading papers, along with the handful of volunteer stuff I found myself involved in.
By 2000, when grandboy #2 was born, grandparenting was starting to grow on me. And then there were the stories Cindy would retell about a student of hers who was in particular pain with the passing of his or her grandfather with whom the kid felt a strong attachment. I can remember that whenever a story like that would come up, I’d go back in memory to try to find anything similar in my heart for my own grandparents. I couldn’t.
Then I came to understand that grandparenting is different for everybody. Like so many of us, we have friends who have taken on the immense role of raising grandkids. Wow. That’s one extreme. And we know others whose kids live in Seattle or Chicago and they only get to see the little ones on holidays and maybe a week in the summer.
In my case, my younger daughter is the one most responsible for turning me into an active grandpa. Just as I was retiring from the classroom, she was inquiring about my helping with childcare for her two year-old, Noah. He had already been placed at Children’s World or something, so he was okay, but she was hoping I could do a few days a week to help ease her daycare costs. For my first year out, I avoided the commitment and found myself busy traveling some and doing lots of other stuff. It was that next summer when Noah, then 3, contracted a virus that kept him out of commercial daycare. Grammy and I stepped in for daily care -- and our lives were never the same.
The virus had the little guy feeling pretty energetic in the morning, but by after lunch he was draped on a shoulder all afternoon. We learned to play games in the morning and have quiet time after lunch.
And in that process my teacher-self who had always searched for that next great student-created project, started looking for neat stuff for Noah and me to do. Since that time we’ve become regulars at the Air Force Museum, built and flown lots of balsa airplanes, dug a pond in the backyard -- complete with fish that first year at Noah’s insistence, and split firewood in the backyard. At least once every couple of weeks these days Noah wants to head back and split more wood. And he makes it clear he wants to swing the ax. I can have the maul and wedges.
In that play and work, Noah and I have developed a relationship that I never knew myself as a kid. Love runs deep between us. I find myself calling him brother when congratulating him on a job well done.
I am mighty lucky to have been dubbed the GPT -- Grandpa Tom. It’s a real honor and source of energy in my life. Life is good. Grandkids are amazing.
Today’s elder idea: Make quality time with kids. What is more important than showing children they are loved?
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