LIVING IN THE BED OF A PICKUP : Grandchildren

Friday, November 22, 2013

We left Stone Mountain yesterday morning. We were excited to be going to Florida, but our hearts were a bit heavy leaving our family. The reason we planned our trip to be able to stay in Georgia for 2-3 weeks was because of our grandsons Soren and Sebastian. Our other grandchildren live close to us in Washington, and we feel like we to experience them growing up, and get to enjoy them regularly. But when grandchildren live across the continent, it is wholly a different thing.

And we got to do that—spend a lot of time with Soren and Sebastian. Being grandparents is the most important part of our lives. Children cannot have too many people who are crazy about them and everything that they do.

I know how important grandparents are partly because it was something I missed out on. My grandparents were very old by the time I came along, and were used up by the Depression and the hard lives they had. I don’t blame them at all. I know some people have it rough these days, but I gotta say: there’s rough and then there’s the Depression.

My one vivid memory of fun time with a grandparent was with my mother’s father. When we would go to visit him and my grandma during the winter on their farm in Oskaloosa, Iowa, he would sometimes get me up early in the morning, warm my clothes on the coal stove, and take me out with him to do morning chores. The mornings were cold—I remember that well. But I loved doing it, even though I was only three or four at the time. He died shortly after that. I never got to tell him how important those few mornings were to me.

How many times I have wished I could have had an adult conversation with my grandparents, to find out who they were and what they thought. I’d like to hear their experiences with my parents. I got none of that. I want to know them, and never had a chance to.

When I taught at ISU typically once or twice a semester I would have a student approach me to tell me he or she would be missing class because his “grandpa” or “grandma” died. There was usually such sadness in their eyes. To try to make this a bit easier for them I would frequently tell them my story--that I didn’t have grandparents and really missed that, and I was sorry for their loss but glad for them that they had theirs. They listened, and often thanked me.

So Soren and Sebastian live 3000 miles away. We all do the best we can. Parents have to have jobs, and so sometimes living far away from family is just a fact of modern life. But we wish they lived closer.

We had planned on spending 2 ½ weeks at the campground at Stone Mountain Georgia (more on this place in a later blog entry), and then were going to Disneyworld. However, when my mother broke her wrist and I wanted and needed to go back to Colorado to help her and my sister and family, these plans got dumped. Instead we stayed at Stone Mountain a few extra days, or actually Vicky did, since I went to Colorado.

Although all of our plans didn’t work out, that was OK because we got to spend a lot of time with Emily and Sean and with the boys, and that was great. And Soren got to spend another night camping with us (and having Vicky’s pancakes in the morning—yum), and Sebastian also got to go “camping” (which for him meant coming out to the camper to play). We (or just Vicky when I was in Colorado) frequently picked Soren up from school and spent some after school time with him. And we got to spend the entire day with Sebastian a few times.

Our three weeks with the boys:

We arrived at Stone Mountain to find that one of our jacks was not functional. This necessitated driving across town to purchase another one so we could remove the camper from the pickup. After we installed the new jack, I dismantled the old one and got it working again. Ta-da!! We decided we would just carry it with us in the pickup as a backup. We got a great deal on the one we purchased, so everything actually turned out great even though it looked like it could be a real problem.

Our second night there we got to go Trick or Treating with Soren and Sebastian. They shared their candy with us. Can you imagine? I never would have done that.

A day later we drove to eastern Georgia to do the Tour de Tugaloo with Sean. It was nice to be able to do a ride with him on his turf.

I also did some repairs to the top rack of the camper while we were there. One of the brackets got busted off—not sure how that happened. The Lance company gave good customer service—in order to replace that one part they had to tear open a package that had the entire set-up in it, and just charged me a reasonable price for the part. They easily could have justified having me have to buy the entire rack. Two thumbs up there.

Soren eating Vicky’s pancakes.

Soren making cookies in the camper:

Sebastian’s a techy.

What are grandmas for if not to buy grandchildren ice cream behind their parents’ backs?

Rainy day fun:

Our final day here. Fall is ending, and Winter will be here soon. Time to head south.

These boys mean so much to us, just as all of our grandchildren do. We feel that grandparents have something to offer that can round out what parents can give to children. We want to take our children out into nature with us, often, and in many different places. We can afford a camper and have the time to find places to take them—something that is more difficult for parents who are holding down two jobs and dealing with all of life’s pressures in having a family. When we travel we send them postcards and little goodies along the way to help them understand the different places we go, and to let them know that we are always thinking about them.

We hope they will continue to want to camp with us for many years. That is one of the reasons we got the new Dually—it has more room in the back seat for larger children. We have these fantasies of taking longer and more distant trips with them as they get older. That would be so wonderful. And who knows, maybe we will.

We know that when they are young adolescents that their grandparents will be yucky and gross and embarrassments to them, and we are looking forward to that. But it passes. And maybe instead of embarrassments we will just be seen as their goofy grandparents—driving all around the country acting like a couple of kids. That will be OK. They will see in us, as well as in other people in their lives, that growing old is not something to be afraid of, but is something that happens if you are lucky and that has its own special joys.

In no time we will be flying back to Seattle, to see family, and to spend time with our grandchildren there. We think about them a lot, and miss them so much.

My father used to say, at the end of our visits with him and my mother: “I wish you guys had never come.” Of course what he meant was that saying good by was so difficult. That’s how we feel today about Soren and Sebastian—we wish we had never gone there.