Dear Reader Column 10-24-07

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Dear Reader,

My grandson and I spent most of yesterday afternoon watching cars. It's become one of our favorite pastimes. Right now it's easy to snag Baby Paul for a few hours in the afternoon, because he only lives 10 minutes away. But at the end of the year, our son and daughter-in-law will be moving farther away and then it will be a 40 minute trip to get to their house, which worries my husband a lot.

My husband worries that we won't be able to see Paul as much, and be as spontaneous about our visits. And he also worries that when our grandson gets a little older, he'll be playing with the kids in his own neighborhood, and so it might seem boring when he comes to our house. (For the past week my husband has been lobbying for us to put a pool in our backyard.)

But I assured him that I used to love to go to my Grandma and Grandpa Hale's house, and from an outsider's view, there didn't appear to be anything spectacular going on there--yet I never wanted to leave.

My grandparents knew how to make simple, everyday things fun. Even helping my grandmother do the laundry was something I looked forward to, because there was an old wringer washer in the basement and you had to feed the clothes through the wringer with a wooden stick. Picking berries in Grandma's back yard, going to the junk store in Fennimore, baking cookies, running errands (we had a ritual about walking down Main Street past the shoe store) and watching my grandma journal every night, before she went to bed. Looking for walnuts in the woods with my grandpa, fishing, and watching cartoons with him at four o'clock every afternoon when he got home from his gasoline route and of course, visiting cemeteries on a Sunday afternoon to say "hi" to the relatives.

I'm sure there must have been at least one time when my grandparents paid admission for an "attraction," but I can't remember any. Yet the times I spent with them were some of the absolute best times of my life. I learned a lot from my grandparents and whatever we were doing, it always felt like fun.

So here we sit--my grandson Paul and I. We're sitting on the sidewalk in front of my house, watching cars. No admission, and I'm not sure what we're learning, but we sure are having a lot of fun!

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

*To see a photo, go to: http://tinyurl.com/2j9uxl

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
http://www.DearReader.com

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Comments

[Ann]

Suzanne,

You got that exactly right! That is what I remember about being with my grandparents and that is the type of grandma I want to be.