This week my grandmother is turning 85 years old. As I think back on the time I have spent with her, I have realized that I have not always given her, or my grandfather, the respect I should have. My grandparents, and other people of their generation, have so many great lessons to teach us that we should listen to with far better attention.
They have had a lifetime of experiences. They serve as a bridge to a past that we might never know otherwise. I know most people will talk about how they can share stories about what growing up in the Great Depression was like or how they reacted to Pearl Harbor, but the little things they share are just as important. Events like friends of my great-grandmother telling her not to take my grandmother and her siblings to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs because it was too scary for them might be completely irrelevant to most people, but I think it is important to know these little stories. They make the past far more alive than someone just saying they grew up in the Great Depression.
They do understand what we are going through, even if it doesn't seem that way. It is incredibly hard to picture your grandparents as being anything but your grandparents, but they were young once. My grandmother's 17th birthday, for example, is still completely fresh in her memory because her best friend, Virginia, threw her a surprise party that Walter Cotter (who is not my grandfather) showed up at. My grandmother was once a teenage girl who cared about boys (who were not my grandfather) and dances and other things which seem to help no interest to her now. It makes you realize that one day my sister might be telling her own granddaughter about the surprise party her best friends threw for her this past summer for her 16th birthday. They definitely act as grounders that, you know, college isn't going to last forever and one day we'll all have grey hair and stories no one pays attention to.
They also know the struggles we go through. When we have problems like having no money to pay for school, we tend to forget our grandparents had the same problems. My grandmother only went to business school because they gave her a scholarship; the only reason the school gave her a scholarship was because they wanted to meet the girl wrote a science-fiction essay to the prompt where she wanted to see herself in ten years.
They have lived full lives of struggles and joys, and continue to do so. The least we can do is pay attention to them as they always pay attention to us. Because when we least expect it, we might lose our chance to pay attention to them.
