I remember having the same sort of relationship with my grandfather, thinking him wiser than the rest of the family. One fact about each of my grandparents (only maternal because my Dad's parents died before I was born)
My grandfather took my brother to get allergy shots on Saturday mornings. And he and I would wait in the car while Jeff got his shots. I would ask him all sorts of questions about everything and he always answered me seriously. Those morning, which must have been hell for Jeff, were gold for me.
My grandmother was not too drawn to children. But she did like to sew and she made me the most fabulous clothes for my Ginny dolls. She did it all of it by hand and every skirt or dress and even hats and coats were perfect and wonderful. I was the envy of all my girlfriends.
What do you remember about your grandparents?
15 comments:
Great photo. My mother's father smoked a pipe and rolled his own Bull Durham cigarettes. He'd give me his empty Prince Albert cans and Bull Durham sacks. I remember the flecks of tobacco on his shirts and vests.
I'm so glad that Kevin has such wonderful grandparents. That bond is a very special one I think.
My nephew and his wife just named their son after my Dad (his grandfather). My nephew had a very close relationship with my Dad. My Dad would go to all my nephew's school and sports events. They would watch TV baseball games together. When my nephew got his first speeding ticket, he asked my Dad to go to court with him instead of his father.
My mother's mother was a great cook. She made stuff like mushroom & barley soup (so thick you could stand a spoon up in it, the way I like it), pot roast with kasha and all kinds of other delicious food. Her husband died of pneumonia (had their been penicillin then he'd have survived) when she was in her mid-20s and had three little kids (my mother was 8, her sister 2 and her brother 3 months old) and she was running a restaurant on the Lower East Side.
My father's father was a real character. He was a fur dyer and had been a millionaire before his factory burned down. We once met him at the old Pennsylvania Hotel across from Madison Square Garden for dinner and he was giving us a nearly day by day recital of what he did in 1922. (He used to go to Canada to get the furs.) He was quite a character.
Jeff M.
I wonder how his Dad feels about this, George.
My great grandmother was left a widow early and had two sons to raise. She had to give them over to Girard College when she was just too poor to survive on a seamstress' salary. Girard College took indigent kids, but they had to live there. She only saw them on Sundays.
My nephew has a turbulent with is father. That explains why he gravitated to his grandfather from an early age.
Sadly, the grandparents on my father's side were dead by the time I was born. The grandparents on my mother's side were a distance away.
When we were kids I only had three grandparents but I also had three great-grandparents. My mother's mother's parents (who they moved in with after her father died) lived across the street from us when we moved to Brooklyn (they lived with my mother's aunt) and my great grandfather lived until just before my wedding. I remember taking my mother to visit him in the hospital the day before he died. He was quite something.
Jeff M.
I had one great grandparent but saw her very rarely. I don't think she and her daughter-in-law, my grandmother, got along all that well.
My father, being the 16th of 19 children, had long since lost his parents.
Patti, I don't remember my paternal grandparents well as my granddad died when I was very young and my grandmother passed away before I was born. But both of them left behind a rich legacy — their writings. Both were writers and grammarians.
On the other hand, I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents and the one thing I remember most about them is how loved, safe, and secure they made me feel, that everything was going to be just right. My mother's father was an artist, as is the rest of that side of my family.
I guess very few kids are botn with all four grandparents still alive. Although we have friend with kids that have seven grandparents what with divorce and remarriage. Figuring out names for all of them was challenging.
Our family lived on the third floor of my maternal grandparents house when I was small. Most mornings I would have breakfast with my grandfather, who had come out from Ireland when he was 14 and worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway until he retired 54 years later. At breakfast was when we bonded. We called my grandmother Gammy and she came to live with us in northern Manitoba after my grandfather died so I had a close relationship with both. My father's parents came out from Wales when he was six. We didn't see them as much as they lived about 70 miles away. He was a policeman and later a prison guard and they lived directly across the street from the jail. He had an award-winning garden. They were big in the Baptist church and their living room aka parlour was pretty well reserved for visits from the minister. No kids running around in there. I think of my grandparents often and realize how lucky I was to have all four in my life when I was growing up.
You were lucky, Kent. I had my maternal grandmother in my life until I was 47. But the grandfather in this picture died when I was 12 and the rest before I was born.
I never knew my father's parents. My mother's parents lived with my mother's older sister but I didn't really know them until we moved to New York when I was 13. Both spoke heavily-accented English and I largely ignored them because, being a know-it-all teenager, I had no use for old folks. I do recall my grandfather woke early each weekday, put on a suit, and went through a long trek to New York City from upstate. He did this until he was 80. He was a shoemaker who had been apprenticed out by his parents when he was a boy in Italy. My grandmother cooked wonderful Italian dishes, worked like a rented mule, and in the evenings crocheted the most beautiful lace tablecloths and doilies. I wish I had one of them. She did the patterns from memory. In hindsight, I wish I'd know both of them better.
Don't we all!
I only knew one of my grandparents and he died when I was 4 or 5. I remember him giving me a chaw of tobacco, which made me very sick.
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