Grandparents

I remember my mom's 36th birthday. It was the year of the 17-year cicadas in Iowa, and we sat in the dining room with the shades-of-70's-green and brown shag carpet, eating homemade cake and ice cream. We gave her little trinket gifts and sang and she smiled and said 'thank you.' Then she wailed, "I'm SO OLD!"


Now I'm 36. And most days, I don't feel too bad, but I'm starting to see new wrinkles and my skin is turning papery in certain places, if only just. My joints don't ache, but they are starting to creak, and when I jump on the trampoline I feel like every organ under my bellybutton is going to fall out on the next bounce.


Mom is in her early (very early) 60's. She walks just like her dad and LOVES doing things for her grandkids she NEVER would've done for us. Like make certain that there is a candy dish within reach in every single room. And telling them not to bother picking up the toys. And they LOVE her back.


On the days that are hardest on my morale for being a mother, and I find myself wondering what's in it for me, I have to remember that every adult with grandchildren says that being a parent is only the work you have to do to be able to reach the penultimate joy. Which is SPOILING ROTTEN all your grandchildren.

Just look how happy they are in that chaos. I guarantee that if those were all their own squirrelly boys and unsmiling daughter, not sitting still and smiling nicely for a photo, they wouldn't have been nearly as giddy. There is a good reason I still shudder when I hear "Olan Mills" or "family pictures". 


But we are SO BLESSED they are  here.


Two years ago, on December 3rd a little after 6pm (and about 2 minutes after my sister and brother-in-law had picked up their two little boys), two men came to the door. Dad, thinking it was Mom coming home from Bible Study (she was already 15 minutes late), went to the door to meet her. Two  men entered armed with pistols, pushed him to the floor and held him at gunpoint for nearly 20 minutes while they searched the house for someone they thought was hiding there. As they left, one said, "Don't move." Dad waited for the bang that would end his life on this earth.


But the gunshot didn't come.


The men left. Dad waited, still, about 60 seconds before running up the stairs and picked up the phone to call 911. At that moment, Mom walked in.


According to police reports, this was the only breaking and entering that year which did not end in someone getting shot and killed.


We are lucky in so many ways. There are many times that I have felt that divergence in what could have been and what is within the last few years. I've realized that, many times, our lives become as defined by what almost happened as by what has happened. 


Dad said that, while the men were yelling and threatening him, he knew he was being held in God's hand. He felt God's indescribable presence, the "peace that passes all understanding." He knew that no matter how that night ended, he was being held in the hands of One bigger and more complete and more whole than any of us can ever be.


There is an awful lot that I think I believe. Some of it very strongly. But there are only two things I know. I know that there is so much more out there that we cannot see or study or understand. And I know that, when our souls leave this limiting body, one of the only things we can take with us is love. Not romantic love or happy love or content love, although it may be all of those things, too. God-love, Peace-love, Whole-Love. That love that we can only get from one Source and that cannot be completely understood in this life. 


And every time I think about how frustrating my kids can be in any given moment, I think about how much my parents have impacted my kids, and how much my grandparents have impacted me, and I pray that I can be that for my grandchildren someday, too. 


Someday.