A Week With The Grand-kids

We took five of our grandchildren (ages 5 to 13) to the lake for a week – well, nearly a week. We had a great time and in one sense I hated to see the week come to an end. In another sense, I felt relief when we’d successfully turned them over to their parents in one piece! My grandma-sitting motto is “I keep them alive – not clean!”

Our short exclusive time with the grand-kids helped me remember the great times we had parenting our seven children. Sometimes I look back and wish we’d done things a little differently: corrected one more or less, listened more intently, had more “one on one” time with each of them. Maybe I could have exercised more patience, inspired them to greater feats, taken them to daily Mass on a regular basis, and on and on. Parental hindsight is a real downer. But, living with the grand-kids that week brought back some great memories. They squealed and cavorted through the small cabin, spilled juice on the rug, requested very specific sandwiches for lunch (with butter, without, with mayo, plain bread, bologna, turkey, ham, cut in four pieces…). I patiently dealt with reasonable requests, smiled at their boisterous antics, and thanked God for each of them. I remembered doing those very things in the past.

I remembered the days of what I like to call “protecting my turf”—teaching our children to respect our home, to pick up toys, to refrain from jumping on furniture, to take off those muddy shoes, and just monitoring the traits of a “pack mentality”—that rambunctious, daring, unbridled behavior when two or more children are gathered together. I recalled a “gifted sense”—a marvelous ability given mothers from our Heavenly Father to know when one child needed a hug, words of praise for a job well done, encouragement, or correction. I remembered sacrificing mightily for Catholic school tuition and living faith filled lives for them to emulate. We filled their lives with love (and sometimes just toleration of each other). Mike and I hugged and kissed one another in the kitchen, often with a baby in our arms and little ones struggling to squeeze between us. Our excursion with the grand-kids to Park Point in Duluth to swim in Lake Superior’s icy 3-foot waves (the children and grandpa, I held down the beach blanket) helped me recall our many camping adventures with our children, the joy we experienced when showing them the beauty of the woods, rivers, and mountains that God created and teaching them to appreciate all of nature.

We all profited from roughing it a bit in a tent, carrying our water to the campsite, cooking over a fire or camp stove, even experiencing the trials of the outdoor facilities. I also remembered my apprehensions when they climbed the rocks in the Black Hills of South Dakota or Colorado Rockies. I recall stifling my fears for their safety so they could bravely face the world and experience life to the fullest. Ultimately that is our goal. We work to prepare our children for life here on earth and also eternal life.

We’d like to protect them forever from life’s bumps and bruises, but a time comes when they will not always listen to us or take our advice. They may choose not to be bound by our rules but will also have to deal with the consequences. We pray that they will make good, sound choices. We also pray that the consequences of poor choices will help them to learn and grow closer to God. We pray that they will embrace our faith, but know that faith is a gift that they will have to accept or reject on their own. When our children came to claim their own, I relished watching them playing in the lake with their children, helping fix their plates at dinnertime, tucking them into bed at night with special bedtime prayers. I experienced a bit of nostalgia, but it felt good to sit back and let someone else do the work

. Now, I concentrate on praying for each of them, for safety, for health, for happiness, but mostly that they will embrace the Catholic faith that we tried so hard to lead them to and that their Heavenly Father will continue to draw them to Him. One of the bonuses of raising a family is seeing our children raise their own. We can sympathize with their fatigue, share their laughter, support them as they face the same challenges we did when we raised them. Sometimes we may even hear our very own words emanate from their mouths. We weren’t always perfect, but we surely did try, and we had to keep them clean too!

With the whole crew, summer, 2009