BS: Grandmas are for.....

Subject: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: GUEST,Wolfhound person
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 04:50 AM

Being sick all over when mummy isn't available
Letting you have more crisps than usual
Not making you eat your fruit & veg.
Cuddling
Explaining that mummy and daddy need time to do things by themselves occasionally
Letting you stay up late
Being part of family history and telling you all about it

Paws

Subject: RE: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 04:55 AM

Spoiling grandchildren. Chattering on the phone to you. Cuddling.

I'm looking forward to seeing Harry with my mother over the next 2 weeks.

My Grandma taught me how to bake and smiled when the flour went all over the kitchen flour. We stayed up late reading books and went for walks, she watched as we climbed the apple trees at the bottom of her garden. Later when I was older we'd watch films and share a tub of Ben and Jerry's, chat on the phone lots (we still do that)go shopping, walk along the esplanade and stare at the sea.

Subject: RE: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: jacqui.c
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 08:05 AM

Telling their grandchildren all about how naughty their parent was as a child.

Confirming that their grandbaby is the best thing ever.

Activities that begin with "Don't tell your mother".

Subject: RE: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 08:45 AM

Offerering homemade nut bread made with black walnuts and smeared with real "country" butter as prizes for the card game "High Man Wins."

Subject: RE: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: GUEST,Eye Lander
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 08:53 AM

Not sure, but all being well I shall find out in November. It will be my son's first child.

Subject: RE: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: Sorcha
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 09:14 AM

Just being there.

Subject: RE: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: GUEST,Eye Lander
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 10:25 AM

Sadly my son's girlfriend doesn't like me my every much so I may not have the contact with my expected Grandson that I wish for.

Jillie

Subject: RE: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: Becca72
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 11:07 AM

I didn't know my grandmothers very well, either (see Grandpas thread) but I had a great aunt who did all the things that Grandmas do. So:

Great Aunts are for:

Letting you try on all of her jewelry and shoes over and over again.

Baking brownies from scratch and mediating while you and your cousin fight over who gets to use the walnut chopper.

Staying up late curled up on the pull-out couch to watch Dallas.

Taking you school shopping and telling you to pick out one outfit you love, regardless of the cost.

Shoving money in your hand when your mother isn't looking.

She's been gone for 18 years now and I still think of her every day.

Subject: RE: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: Rasener
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 11:25 AM

changing into a wolf and waiting for you in bed!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: GUEST,LTS pretending to work
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 11:50 AM

Regretably, my mother's mother is best remembered lying in a bed, quietly dying of breast cancer, but still managing to embroider the most amazing flowers and Jacobean crewel work right up until the cancer took her eyes. She taught me to hold a needle and gave me my first embroidery piece to work. I still have some of her silks and the last piece she worked on.

The photographs I have of her before her illness show a lively and energetic young farmers' wife who could feed the extended family and the farmhands with a 3 course meal from what appeared to be a pound of mince and a bag of apples.

My other grandmother was a single mother aged 16 in the late 1920's. Photos show her dour and unsmiling, even at family weddings. I remember her as larger than life and very self-possessed, you dare not cross her or speak out. She was always known by her surname and was not immediately likeable. She ruled the family with a rod of iron, even when confined to bed or a wheelchair with illness. Above all, this grandmother was for obeying. Or else.

Grandmothers are for taking after; I'm very glad I took after my mother's mother!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: Llanfair
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 12:13 PM

As a Granny-of-four, I model myself on my Granny. She was an artist and a great reader and crossword-doer. She patiently taught me to think through the cryptic clues in the Times crossword.

She was born in the reign of Queen Victoria, and appreciated antiques and precious things, not neccesarily valuable.

She understood where I was coming from, when my parents didn't.

She had the time to listen to me, and wasn't disappointed by the lack of domestic skills that so outraged my mother.

She taught me the meaning of integrity, by encouraging me to look it up in the dictionary, then answering my questions.

I hope I can do the same for my grandsons.

Subject: RE: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: Janie
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 08:12 PM

More than words can say.

One grandmother -

Sitting on the bench beside the Carousel, smiling and waving everytime your pony comes round.

Tucking you in at night in the bedroom your father slept in as a child and telling you about how they used it as a chicken coop during the '36 flood.

Wonderful country cooking, especially "Nannie beans" at big Sunday and holiday dinners - nobody could cook the half-runners from Papaw's garden to taste as good (or be so bad for you) as Nannie.

Tearing up leftover biscuits with great ceremony and entrusting you to carry them out to toss for the birds. Motioning for you to come quietly to the back door to watch the birds feed and bathe in the mornings after breakfast.

Keeping graham crackers and other treats in the big drawer in the stove beside the oven where they stayed warm and crisp, and in reach of little hands.

Letting you watch as she carefully but on her hat and a little lipstick every evening before putting us in the car to go downtown to pick up Papaw from his office at the C&O.

Fiercely snapping off the offending flowers of geraniums, petunias and snapdragons at the first sign of fading - and transferring a life-long love of flower gardening to her granddaughter - I can not go into the garden without the image of her in my mind.

Carefully navigating a steep hillside at the city park in her very prim and proper dresses and pumps to find the little creek with a bit of wildness and woods that reminded her of her mountain farm childhood, three stair-step granddaughters trailing behind her like ducklings. Then sitting right down on the mossy bank in spite of her clothes and taking off her shoes and stockings to dangle her feet in the cool water.

Sewing buttons, mending torn linings, repairing seams, anytime a ragged, lazy and broke college student grandchild showed up in a cab from the college in time for a free meal.

Stringing beans on thread for leatherbritches, and apples as well, to make winter time dried apple stack cake.

Subject: RE: BS: Grandmas are for.....
From: Janie
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 08:59 PM

The other grandmother -

Letting you sit in the 'shampoo' chair and watch as she puts finger-waves into the long, thin, blue-gray hair of really old ladies, and listen to all the talk and gossip of the beauty shop.

After a hard day of doing other people's hair for money, having you lean back in that same 'shampoo' chair, and giving you a good shampoo and a head rub to die for.

Thumping on the basement ceiling of the beauty shop with a broom handle to tell her granddaughters in the apartment upstairs to quiet down.

Sending us downstairs to the closed, dimly-lit shop with nickels to drop in the Coke machine, push down the broad, silvery lever, and wait for the satisfying clunk of an ice-cold 10 oz. Coke bottle dropping into the tray. We'd stand a moment and sniff the air, still rendolent with the chemical smell of the perms and dye jobs she had given that day, then head back up the steep stairs to play cards, eat popcorn, and drink those chilly drinks.

Letting you put the 20 combs she had just scrubbed into a sterilizer solution to soak overnight at the end of the day.

Giving you really awful haircuts until you are old enough to set your foot down.

Taking you to bowl in a lane beside her, as she bowls with her league team - (ready for this?) - the "Twenty Twinkles."

Teaching you to play gin rummy, rook, Yahtzee.

Inviting you and your college friends in at 1:00 a.m. when you appear under her lighted window unannounced to watch with her as Tiny Tim gets married.

Teaching you that a life of hard work and low pay does not have to be grim, especially when it is rich with family and laughter.