John Y.’s Musings from the Middle: Grandfathers

Grandparents and grandchildren have a special bond.

They share a common enemy. Today’s hovering helicopter parents have, in their zest to simulate the perfect developmental environment, forgotten some important ingredients to creating a whole and fully functional child.

Sometimes, if we are lucky, a contrarian grandfather (who still hasn’t gotten around to reading Dr. Spock’s Baby and Childcare – or anything written since on child rearing) can be just what is needed to help create a well-rounded child. My 13 year old daughter and 17 year old son spent time with my 78 year old father earlier this week, and helped bring this lesson home for me. And so, with that, I offer this appreciation…..

Here’s to grandfathers, especially the fun ones.

The ones who never realized there was a time to stop rebelling, exploring or experimenting.

Who in the eyes of some never quite finished growing up…but upon closer observation merely never forgot how to have fun–or listened when told “You’re too old for that.”

The ones who are maddening enigmas on the bad days but wonderfully surprising on the be…tter days.

The ones who live close to the heartbeat of life because they don’t know how to live any other way….who showed up one day in their childhood at the local carnival and think they never left.

Who feel retirement is as about as appealing as taking an extra AP course in high school.

And who, when out with two teenage kids, can make the teenagers question their personal sense of coolness and how they view the world.

Who give surprising answers that ring true to conventional questions with conventional answers that ring hollow.

And who know that sometimes all a 13 year old and a 17 year old need to make them feel good about their world is a 78 year old with the right attitude.

Those grandfathers don’t always get the credit they deserve in our media and literature…but they have a lot to teach us. They possess a lot of important wisdom about, as Thoreau wrote, how to suck all the marrow out of life…and do it with gusto and a grin.

Thank goodness for the grandfathers who teach us the things we need to know. But thank goodness, too, for the ones who teach us what we want to know– but may not know how to ask. The skills that some scoff at but the wiser know are the AP equivalents of life courses that will take us farther than even advanced chemistry—and possibly even farther than Calculus III.

This kind of stuff: