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Veterans are Real People

Posted on November 6, 2013 by susanrray

Picture 1A small sign at Dixie Avenue reads Putnam County Veterans Hall.  I drove my van down a narrow driveway beside the County Court Clerk’s Office and parked on the lower level behind the red brick building.  “Are you sure this is really a museum?” my oldest Grand asked.  I read aloud the sign on the door: Putnam County Archives and Veterans Hall.  Yes, we were at the right place.

“What’s a ‘vetrun’?” asked my four-year-old Grand.  Someone who was in the military, the armed forces.  “What’s armed forces?”  That was harder to explain to my Grands, ages 4, 6, and 8.  It was time to go inside the building and look around.

We met the first soldier.  Standing life-size and wearing full army uniform.  A mannequin, inside a wooden showcase with a glass front and mirrored back.  On a small gold plaque, the veteran’s name, rank, and where he had served were printed.  We saw more showcases and dozens of framed photographs of men and women in military uniforms.  Photographs hanging from ceiling to floor.

My Grands and I wandered among the maze-like hallways and commented about men with mustaches, women wearing white sailor uniforms, rifles inside showcases.  We saw veterans who served during the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq, and all the years between.  There were 800 photographs and 75 mannequins in showcases honoring veterans of all branches of the armed forces.

 “Are these real people?” my young Grand asked.  Yes, each and every veteran is a real person.  Like my daddy and Husband’s father who served during World War II, and my brother who served in the Air Force about fifty years ago.  Every veteran is somebody’s child, somebody’s brother or sister, somebody’s husband or wife, somebody’s father or mother.

Inside one showcase beside a solider were photographs of a young man, before enlisting in the military.  As a high school senior, wearing a mortarboard.  As a groom, standing beside his bride.  As a parent, holding a baby boy.  A real person.

Veterans are real people who left their homes and joined the Armed Forces.  Who lived in, as a friend told me, an alien environment.   He fought in Viet Nam, and he said that serving in the military was a mind and body bender.  A way of life that I cannot imagine. A way of life that I wanted my young Grands to glimpse, even if all they understood was that veterans had worn different kinds of uniforms and had lived far from home.

Let’s all honor veterans on Veteran’s Day, Monday, November 11.  Thank a veteran.  Tell your children and grandchildren stories about their relatives who are veterans.  Sing a patriotic song.  Fly the American flag.  Visit the cemetery.  Visit the Putnam County Veterans Hall.  Veterans are real people.  Real heroes.

The Putnam County Veterans Hall, located at 121 B Dixie Avenue, will be open on Veteran’s Day from 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. Regular hours: Wednesday – Friday, 12-4:00 p.m. Call (931) 520-0042 for more information.

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‘Tis the Season for Leaves Part 2

Posted on October 31, 2013 by susanrray

JumpingInLeaves

 

 

 

Tis’ the Season for Leaves

Part Two

            Tis’ the season for leaves.  Beautiful yellow and red and orange leaves that light up Tennessee mountains.   Leaves that fall to the ground.  Leaves that shout, “Play!”  Last week in this space, I whined about raking and blowing of leaves off our driveway and yard.  But I’m really not a Grinch.  And I really love living in the woods.

I’ve played in leaves all my life.  The house where I grew up had a yard with a couple of maples and a huge oak tree.  My best friend and I created ground level playhouses using leaves for walls.  We’d skipped Saturday morning cartoons to set up our yard house, and we carried our lunch to our outside kitchen.  Late afternoon, we raked our playhouse into a big pile, jumped in the middle, and hid.  And we threw leaves high in the air, letting them float over and around and on us.

When I was a college student (right here at TTU), I begged my parents to not rake all the leaves so I could do them when I was home for Thanksgiving.  Dad and I raked the huge brown leaves into a pile that I walked through and jumped in.  Is anyone ever too old to settle into a bed of fall leaves?  And I threw leaves in the air.  I’m sure Dad wanted to get the job done, but he indulged my play before we threw every leaf on the garden plot for mulch.  Mom served vegetable soup and cornbread for supper.  Those days made happy memories.  And when my children were young, they built leaf houses and forts.  They threw and stomped leaves, and they hid under mountains of leaves.

A few weeks ago when the leaves had just begun to fall, my Grands were playing in our backyard.  They kicked rubber balls down the hill and threw them back up to see whose ball went higher on the hill before it rolled down.  We gathered fall treasures.  Hickory nuts, crimson dogwood leaves, and acorns.  “I’ll be right back,” David, age 8, said.  He ran into the garage and came out carrying a leaf rake.  “Get me one!”  his six-year-old sister yelled.

David and Lou worked.  They started at the top of the hill and raked halfway down.  “What a great job you’re doing!”  I said and wondered that if I’d suggested that they rake leaves, would it have been fun?  The pile grew larger.  Big enough that I couldn’t let it stay on the grass, and my Grands had to go home soon.  They could help me carry the leaf pile off the yard, I thought.  “That’s enough.  I think you need to stop,” I said.

“You’re right, Gran, that’s enough!”  Lou threw down her rake and jumped right in the middle of the leaf pile.  “Can you see me?”  she asked.  Those leaves scattered when she jumped a foot off the ground.  And they scattered more when my Grands ran through the pile and rolled down the hill and had a leaf fight.

Fall leaves – Mother Nature’s toys.

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Tis’ the Season for Leaves

Posted on October 24, 2013 by susanrray

fall-leaves Tis’ the season for leaves.  Those beautiful yellow and red and orange leaves that light up Tennessee mountains.  Those beautiful leaves that fall to the ground.   Those leaves that aren’t so beautiful when they cover my yard and deck and driveway.  Especially when it rains.

I love living in the woods.  I love to watch tiny buds burst into leaves in the springtime, and I love the comfort of a shade tree.  And nothing in nature is prettier than the colors of autumn.  But when leaves begin to fall from trees, they spell work.

Almost thirty years ago, Husband and I built a house in the woods.  Through the years, we’ve lost trees to disease and storms, but it seems that each year our trees produce more and bigger foliage than the year before.  We’ve used every method to remove leaves.  Raked, mowed, and blown.  When our children lived at home, we ‘did leaves’ as a family undertaking, and now we usually, and happily, hire out the job.  Some people say to let all the leaves fall and then get rid of them one time.  Well, if we tried that, we’d be up to our eyeballs in leaves.  At least, up to our knees.   Someone will have to blow or rake the leaves in our yard at least three times between now and December.

Early in our marriage Husband assumed the responsibility of yard care, but because I’m the one who loves living in the woods (he’d be happy in a walk-up apartment) and we need to see where to drive, I try to keep the driveway leaf free.  I haul out my electric leaf blower, a 100-foot extension cord, and a rake.  I spend as much time untangling that long extension cord and moving it from an outlet on the front porch to a basement outlet as I do blowing leaves.  And I use a rake where I can’t reach with the blower.  Two hours later, I can see pea gravel and concrete once again.

The next day, leaves litter the driveway.  By the second day, especially if there’s been breeze, even a mild southerly breeze, I can’t walk the length of our driveway and not step on leaves.  Time to haul out the leaf blower.

Last week, my oldest Grand, age 8, made my heart quicken.  “Gran, can I blow the leaves?” he asked.  Can he?  How fast?  As quickly as I could get him to my house.  He carried the leaf blower, and I lugged the extension cord.  I gave directions on how to hold the leaf blower and which way to blow – straight into the wooded yard area designated for leaves.  We pulled on gloves; he covered his ears with hearing protectors.  I began taking wet leaves that were stuck under shrubs, and he stood holding the silent leaf blower in hand.  “One more thing, Gran,” Samuel said.  “Are you going to pay me?”

My Grand says he’s saving money to buy a Lego set.  He’ll have enough money soon.  There’s plenty of work for this boy.

 

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Acting Their Age

Posted on October 16, 2013 by susanrray

images My two sweet little Grands who were born during the summer of 2011 are two years old and they are typical toddlers.  They are learning to be independent and they mimic and they ask questions.

Early one morning when everyone except Dan and I was sleeping, he lined up three toy trucks, one behind the other.  He stacked wooden disks, the size of checkers, side-by-side in the bed of the dump truck.  When he pushed the truck across the floor, the disks rolled off.  I gathered the disks in my hand and said, “Look, Dan, lay these flat, on top of each other and they won’t roll.”  My Grand looked at me sternly, “No, Gen*,” he said.  Two more times he stacked the disks side and side and both times they rolled off the truck.  The fourth time, Dan pushed the truck with one hand and held the disks in the truck bed with his other hand.  “See, Gen,” he said.  “I do it!”  He did it his way.

Elaine sat quietly in her mother’s lap as her older brother and sisters, her parents, and I crowded around a laptop computer watching a slideshow of pictures from a recent family vacation.  She sucked her thumb on one hand and twirled her hair with the other hand.  Her eyes blinked often and slowly.  Then a picture of her sister, with eyes like saucers and arms and legs stretched wide as if she were flying, appeared on the screen.  “What on earth?”  Elaine yelled.  (The picture was snapped after Elaine’s father threw her six-year-old sister high in the air and just before her sister splashed into a swimming pool.)  What on earth?  Who says that?

“Agen,” Dan said.  Pat-a-cake again and again.  His chubby little hands pound the imaginary cake, and if he’d really held a cake, he’d flung it onto the ceiling, not thrown it in a pan.  He grabbed my finger.  “Band-aid?” he asked.  I assured him my finger was okay; the band-aid covered a small cut.  “Why” he asked.  And my answer led to another why and another and another.

“Baby Brumblebee.  Sing, Gen,” Elaine said.  I clasped my hands together and sang, “I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee.  Won’t my mother be so proud or me?”  Elaine put her hand on my mouth and said, “Stop, Gen!”  She pulled my hands apart.  “Brumblebee gone?” she asked.  I reminded her that it was a pretend bumblebee – not real.  “It sting you?”  she asked.  No, I assured her.  “Okay, sing, Gen!”  I clasped my hands and she clasped hers.  “Ouch, it sting me!”  Elaine shouted and threw her arms wide apart.  “Smash it, Gen!”  “I’m smashing up a baby bumblebee,” I sang.  Elaine sang along, slapping her hands together.  At the end of the song, Elaine asked, “Brumblebee, gone?”  Yes, until next time.

Oh, what fun to play with my two-year-old Grands!  Until he runs and she climbs.  Until they say, “NO!” when it’s time to wash their hands.  Until they have more questions than I have answers.  They are two years old and they’re acting their age.

*Gen—toddler talk for Gran.

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It’s Fall at Farmer’s Market

Posted on October 10, 2013 by susanrray

Picture 2     Last Saturday morning, I felt like I was visiting a friend who had changed her décor.  Where ears of corn had filled the beds of pick up trucks, now there were pumpkins.  Bushel baskets that had overflowed with green beans now offer turnip greens and sweet potatoes.  During the past few weeks, Farmer’s Market has taken on a whole new look.

“No, we don’t have fresh spinach,” a seller told another shopper.  “But we’ve got plenty of turnip greens, Swiss chard, fall lettuce, and kale.”  He waved his hand over a table.  All those greens, plus turnips, and a variety of peppers.   I walked passed tables loaded with quart jars of green beans, spices, brightly colored zinnias, apples, pears, fried pies, eggs, fresh baked breads.  “If you like peach cobbler, you’ll love this peach bread,” said a lady wearing a red baker’s apron.

I spotted a pick-up truck loaded with pumpkins and squash.  “Tell me about your squash,” I said.  Twenty minutes later the vendor, Mrs. Fielder, was my friend.  She said, “Cut this spaghetti squash (yellow and small football shape) down the middle, get the seeds out, cook it in the microwave or bake it.  Then instead of those boxed noodles, pull out the middle of your squash, kinda’ in strings or strands, and pour your red sauce over it.  It’s better than any packaged noodle.”

I thought I knew the best way to cook butternut squash, seasoned with butter and brown sugar.  “Don’t you sprinkle them with cinnamon?  Oh, it’s good,” Mrs. Fielder said. “And cut up an apple and bake it with your squash.  Or add a can of mandarin oranges.  A little fruit gives butternuts a whole different flavor.”

“Have you ever eaten a raw butternut or acorn?”  Mrs. Fielder asked.  “Try eating one like you’d eat a apple.  Or make a salad – like you’d make an apple salad.”  I’ve munched on raw yellow summer and zucchini squash, but never a butternut or acorn squash. And I thought a few slices of onion were all I needed to season an acorn. Mrs. Fielder said, “Make a little stuffing – just like for Thanksgiving – and bake a ball of it in the middle of half an acorn.  It’s really good.”  And if I want an orange fall decoration, all I have to do is lay an acorn squash in the sun for a few days.  “Use it for decoration and then eat it.  Winter squash keep a long time in a dry, cool place,” my new friend said.

Picture 1 “Is that a pumpkin or squash?”  I asked, pointing to an orange and white striped vegetable that was shaped somewhat like a drinking gourd.  “A pumpkin – a Kershaw pumpkin,” Mrs. Fielder said.  “And it tastes as good as it looks.  Like a cow pumpkin.  You know, the old timey light-colored real pumpkins?”  She and I agreed that the bright orange pumpkins are pretty, but the delicious pumpkin pies that our mothers made were from cow pumpkins.

I bought so many squash that Husband and I can eat it prepared a different way every night this week.  But we won’t.  Acorn and butternut squash and that Kershaw pumpkin and a few fall colored leaves make a perfect table decoration.  I’ve made a grocery list for my next shopping trip to Farmer’s Market:  more squash, sweet potatoes, apples, pears, turnip greens, and whatever looks good.

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Grand Memory

Posted on October 4, 2013 by susanrray

400-04286209Our home is quiet this week.  Much too quiet after last week’s visit from our two Grands who live an airplane ride away.  Neil, 3 ½ months old, and his mother and his older brother visited so that Neil could meet his Tennessee relatives.  And his relatives – great-grandmother, cousins, aunts, uncles- gathered to welcome him.

Three and a half months old.  Is there an age that a baby is sweeter or more cooperative? Neil smiled and giggled and let us pass him from one set of arms to another.  When he lay on the floor on a quilt, he stayed put and watched.  He sat happily in a bouncy seat while we ate meals.  Of course, his mother made sure he stayed happy because he wore a clean, dry diaper and slept when he was tired and ate when he was hungry.

I had to sneak him away a few times to have some just Neil and me moments.  When Neil’s mother said, “He really needs a bath,” I quickly volunteered.  I hauled out my giant commercial size stainless steel bowl, lined it with a bath towel, and tested the water temperature until it was perfect.  Exactly baby-bath warm.

Neil, wearing only a diaper, lay wrapped in his blanket on my kitchen counter.  I placed my arms along his sides, and, with my face just inches from his, I sang a silly made-up song to the tune of ‘The Farmer in the Dell.’  “We’re going to take a bath…” He smiled and kicked.  As I eased his naked bottom and legs into the water, his arms flung outward.  I held his upper body securely, under his back, and smiled.  “Oh, nice warm water,” I said.  He relaxed, body limp.

As I gently rubbed his body with a soapy washcloth, I remembered the days when I bathed my own babies.  Did I cherish those minutes or was bathing my babies a chore?  Neil’s eyes followed my hand as I poured handfuls of water over his tummy, his legs, his arms.  His fussy cry let me know he didn’t like water on his head.  And I didn’t like water splashed on my face when he kicked his feet.  “Bath time is over,” I said.

I wrapped Neil in the softest towel we own, carried him into my bedroom, laid him on my bed, and quickly diapered him.  I sang,  “La, la, la, la, la….” He giggled, waved his arms and kicked and cooed – ohs and ahs – as only a baby can.  And then he blew a bubble and we both laughed.  I took pictures – just in case I ever forget that sweet, happy time.

As I gently massaged his body with lotion, Neil lay completely still, relaxed.  As I struggled to pull his shirt over his head and get his arms through the shirtsleeves, he fussed.  Finally dressed, he lay on his back in the middle of my bed.  I walked from side to side of the bed straightening the bed spread, and he arched his back and turned onto his side to see me.  When I sat beside him and told him how much I love him, he grinned, kicked his legs, and waved his arms.  A perfect response.

The memories, both mental and digital, must tie me over until next time.  I’m booking an airplane ride to be sure a visit is in the near future.

 

 

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At the Beach

Posted on September 30, 2013 by susanrray

DSC00876I hold her hand tightly.  She tiptoes along the dry sand and then onto the wet, just washed sand.  Together, my two-year-old Grand and I stand as the ocean water laps our toes.  Elaine wiggles her hand out of my grasp and marches toward the breaking waves.  She stops when the white water covers her ankles.  “Let me hold you hand,” I say.  “We’ll jump the waves.”  I covered her hand with mine.  She looks up at me, jerks her hand away, and shouts,  “No, Gran!”  The next wave is bigger and stronger.  She flings her arms out to maintain balance.  My hand on her shoulder gives support.  The water retreats.  She turns and runs to her mother who is standing on dry sand.  Mother lifts Elaine into her arms and Elaine burrows her head in Mother’s shoulder.  “Are you okay?”  Mother asks.  Elaine sniffs and says, “The water fall me.”

I carry my young Grand perched on my hip and walk along the seashore.  Just where the water surges onto the sand.  “Ah, Elaine, the water tickles my toes,” I tell her.  She lays her head on my shoulder.  “Tickle, tickle, tickle,” I chant,  “Oh, my toes are wet.”  She jerks her head up and leans her body to see my toes.  “Tickle, tickle, tickle,” I say.  She wiggles and slides down my leg.  Her toes touch the water.  She stands still; her body rigid as she watches the salt water cover our feet.  She grabs for my hand and clutches my finger.  “Tickle, tickle, tickle.  Our toes are wet,” I say.  Together, we stand and let the water lap our toes.  I pat my foot and the water splashes onto her knees.  She stomps.  “The water tickles your knees,” I say.  She stomps, again and again.

Elaine and I hold hands and walk on the dry beach.  “Shell, Gran!” she shouts.  She picks up a tiny broken white shell and runs to me.  “Hold it!”  I open my hand and she lays her treasure onto my palm.  “Hold it tight!”  She runs a few yards, stops, and gathers the shell fragments around her feet.  Her small hands are full.  “More shells,” she says as she unfolds her fingers and drops her shells into my hands.  It was a short walk in distance – maybe twenty feet.  A long discovery walk.  Shells of all colors.  White, brown, black and all sizes, but no whole and unbroken seashells. Yet each a treasure in Elaine’s tight fists.

I rest, reclined under a beach umbrella, and Elaine sits in my lap.  We watch her brother and sisters and parents and Pop swim and play in the ocean.  Pop and Elaine’s older sister are jumping waves; Pop lifts Elaine’s sister high as each roaring wave breaks under her feet.  “What they doing, Gran?”  Elaine asks.  “Jumping waves.  Can you hear your sister laughing?”  I say.  Elaine nods and stares at her sister and Pop.  “Gran?”  she says.  “I wanna’ jump.”

I stand beside Pop and lift Elaine as he lifts her sister.  The white water splashes her feet.  “Higher!  Gran!  Jump higher!”  Elaine shouts.  She grips my hands and stands knee deep in the water, waiting for the next wave.

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From Quilt to Hearts

Posted on September 19, 2013 by susanrray

Photo 48I sat with scissors and a heart-shaped paper pattern in hand.  One of my granny’s quilts lay spread flat on the floor.  Tears flooded my eyes.  Did I dare cut up Granny’s quilt?  Yes, I’d made that decision the night before.  I wiped my eyes with my hands.  Was Granny’s quilt large enough to make sixteen small twelve-inch pillows?  Yes, I’d measured.  I re-measured.  Would those girls appreciate a heart pillow made from Granny’s quilt?  I hoped so.

Those girls were my daughter and her high school friends.  Girls – sometimes just two and sometimes a houseful – who often spent the night at our house.  After a Friday night ball game, they’d come laughing and giggling through the front door and immediately open the door of the quilt closet.  “I want the one with blue and white.”  “It’s my turn to get the green and red one.”  “Where’s the one with all the orange?”  They rummaged through the many quilts; most that Granny had made, and each girl chose one that was hers for the night.

With quilts tucked under their arms, they ran downstairs to a room that had very little furniture, a big TV, and a pool table.  Each spread her quilt on the floor, claiming a space.  And then it was popcorn and movie time.  Usually, I was asleep before the talking and laughing and potty flushing stopped.  But sometimes I’d awake during the night, tiptoed downstairs, and watch.  Just watch those almost grown-up girls sleep.  Each wrapped snugly in a quilt, her hair splayed over a pillow.

Much too quickly it was spring, 1992, and the girls planned to go their separate ways, after high school graduation.  Colleges, universities, and work called them to different places.  One night, I smiled as they chose their slumber party quilts.  Each seemed intent to choose her very favorite.  And one was the favorite of at least a half dozen girls – a variation of the Four Patch quilt pattern.  Made from flour sacks and shirt scraps, probably in the 1950s.  Using her hands, Granny had cut and pieced and quilted and sewn the binding.

So that was the quilt I wanted those sixteen girls to take with them.  Something to remind them that they were bound by high school secrets and slumber parties, at our house and other parents’ homes.

I carefully cut out the first heart, wiped tears, and cut a second.  Granny’s quilt had kept one girl warm, one night at a time.  I hoped it would warm all those girls’ hearts.  I cut and stitched and stuffed sixteen heart shaped pillows.  I wrapped each one in white tissue paper and put it in a gift bag.  Then I gave Granny’s quilt to my daughter and her friends.  And they cried.  Big crocodile tears.  And they hugged.  Big bear hugs.

I’ve been told that those small pillows travelled to dorm rooms in Texas and Georgia and Kentucky and Knoxville and Cookeville.  And I’ve been told that some of those pillows are now on young girls’ beds.  Young girls – the daughters of girls who used to wrap up in Granny’s quilts.

            Visit the 25th Upper Cumberland Quilt Festival in Algood, September 19-21 to see over 500 quilts and one quilted heart pillow.

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At the Kitchen Table

Posted on September 12, 2013 by susanrray

images “What else did you do with your granny?” my six-year-old Grand asked.  I’d told Lou that I use to sit with Granny at her kitchen table, just as she and I were sitting at mine.  Lou wore her swimsuit, ready to play in the YMCA pool, as soon as we finished breakfast.

Granny lived alone and just down the road, a three-minute walk from my house.  And most afternoons after school, I’d checked in at home, say I’d had a good day, and slam the screen backdoor as I shouted, “I’m going to Granny’s.”  Every time Mother told me not to eat candy or anything sweet at Granny’s or I’d spoil my supper.

Granny would push her quilt blocks aside on the couch and make room for me to sit.  “Are you hungry?”  she’d  ask.  Of course I was, because that question was Granny’s offer to make chocolate candy.  Sugar, a hunk of butter, a little milk, and a scoop of cocoa – all dumped into a metal saucepan and heated.  Stirred a few times until the mixture boiled, and then stirred constantly.  Granny dripped a few drops of the hot mixture into a small glass of cold water.  If it formed a smooth ball when I rolled it with my finger, it was done.  She set the saucepan on her white metal table and poured in a few drops of vanilla flavoring.  Then she beat the gooey chocolate with a wooden spoon until it became thick or until her arm was tired and she announced that we’d made spoon candy.  She poured the warm chocolate candy on a buttered platter.  A white one with a small chip that is now in my kitchen cabinet.

It was grainy candy –sometimes firm enough to cut into sloppy squares immediately and sometimes spoon candy, my favorite.  Granny got two spoons out of a drawer, wiped them on her apron tied around her waist, and then she and I ate straight from the platter.  She started at one end of the platter, I at the other.  As we ate, the syrupy candy would spread out and Granny declared that we’d hardly eaten any.  The candy still covered most of the platter.  And then Granny insisted I drink a big glass of water.  “Wash your mouth out,” she’d said.  No doubt, she didn’t want her daughter-in-law, my mother, to see all the chocolate on my teeth.

As much as I liked the candy, the happiest memory is sitting beside Granny at her kitchen table and talking.  She’d tell me about the day’s soap operas and I’ll tell her about Marvin jumping off the top of the slide on the school playground and getting in trouble.  I liked sitting beside Granny, just as I like my Grand sitting beside me at my kitchen table.

“You know, I had a granny and your mother had a granny,” I told Lou.  “I thought about having you call me Granny, instead of Gran.  What do you think?”

Lou looked at me with raised eyebrows.  “I think a granny wouldn’t swim with me.”  She’s probably right.

 

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Grandparents Day – September 8

Posted on September 4, 2013 by susanrray

images   I hate to admit that when my children were young, I ignored Grandparents Day.  In fact, I thought that designated Sunday in September was probably a day that Hallmark and other greeting card companies created to sell more cards.  I may have encouraged my children to say, “Happy Grandparents Day!” to their grandparents, but that was it.

I was wrong.  Recently, I researched and learned that in 1970, a West Virginia housewife, Marian McQuade, initiated a campaign to set aside this special day.  Throughout her life, she was an advocate for the elderly, especially shut-ins and those in nursing homes, and she wanted a day to publicly honor this generation.  With the help of civic groups, businesses, churches, and political leaders, her campaign for Grandparents Day went statewide.  The first Grandparents Day was proclaimed in 1973 in West Virginia, and that state’s senator introduced a Grandparents Day resolution in the United States Senate.

Then Mrs. McQuade and her team contacted governors, senators, and congressmen in every state.  They gained the support of national organizations interested in senior citizens, as well as churches and businesses.  In 1978, the United States Congress passed legislation proclaiming the first Sunday after Labor Day as National Grandparents Day, and President Jimmy Carter signed the proclamation.  September was chosen for the holiday, to signify the “autumn years” of life.

And I learned that Mrs. McQuade and her committee set three purposes for this day.  One as I expected:  to honor grandparents.  Another, to give grandparents an opportunity to show love for their children’s children.  And finally, to help children become aware of the strength, information, and guidance older people can offer.  To me, these purposes say that Grandparents Day is about making memories.

The official Grandparents Day website, http://www.grandparents-day.com, even suggests activities to strengthen the bond among three generations.  Grandparents can share stories of the past, telling about “the old days.”  Then the door for children, both adult parents and grandchildren, to ask questions is open.  Look at photos together and label the pictures with details of who, when, and where.  Play games and sing songs that grandparents played and sang when they were young.  Construct a family tree so that children see the names of their ancestors.

I like when I’m wrong and right is right.  The creation of Grandparents Day was about talking and sharing and playing and singing.  On Sunday, September 8, I plan to share pictures of my Grands’ parents when they were young, and tell my Grands about the day a pet guinea pig hid behind the refrigerator.  We’ll play a family game of ‘Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button?’  And I’m sure my Grands will be glad they weren’t named after either of my grandmothers – Gladys and Etta Juda.

The founder of Grandparents Day lived to celebrate it for thirty years.  At the time of Mrs. McQuade’s death in 2008, her family (15 children, 43 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren) requested that that in her memory that others pass on family histories to grandchildren, visit with the elderly, or volunteer in a local nursing home.  Her children knew their mother’s idea was to “Make every day Grandparents Day.”

As it should be.

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