Grandparents as Teachers

Before they retired and moved away ...

"A child needs a grandparent, anybody's grandparent, to grow a little more securely into an unfamiliar world." ---Charles and Ann Morse

-*-

I was in the eighth grade when my grandparents retired and moved from Ohio to Florida.  I remember how terribly Mama missed them when they moved.

We kids missed them too, but it wasn't quite the same as it was for Mama. Now that I'm an adult and living so far from my own daughters and grandchildren, I understand how she felt. I miss them so much it hurts.

Before they retired, they only lived ten miles away snuggled in beside Will’s Creek, the river outside of town. To everyone living in Coshocton County, it was pronounced, ‘Will’s Crick’ and it wasn’t until I moved away that I realized that was a regional pronunciation.

I could probably come up with a dozen or more other mis-pronunciations to bedazzle you with, but it would only serve to further underscore my simple and back-woodsy upbringing ...

We went there all the time before they retired and moved. Sometimes, we slept over while Mama and Daddy went Christmas shopping, or just needed to get away from six noisy children for a quiet weekend. It was always an adventure at their house.

There were so many things to do there, no matter what the season. On our half hour trip to their cottage the car felt full of static electricity. We were all filled with questions: what new things would we learn to do and most especially, what would they serve for dinner? That was a favorite game!

Grampa loved to hunt and when he knew we would be visiting for a day, or two, he went out in the woods to hunt for our suppers. The rule was, we had to eat all of our dinner first before he would tell us what we had eaten.

We played a guessing game all through dinner and we actually got pretty good at knowing what it was, just by the taste. At times, it would be squirrel, rabbit, wild turkey, duck, groundhog, wild pig and sometimes even frog’s legs.

There were several abandoned dogs they adopted and fed and they lived under their cottage. This was great, because there was usually a new litter of puppies to fall in love with on every visit.

Both of them worked in town and every spring when the snow melted and ran down from the huge hill behind their cottage, Will’s Creek overflowed its banks and completely covered the road in several places.

To solve the problem of getting home with the road flooded, Grampa tied his rowboat to a tree. They parked the car and rowed to the other side and walked the rest of the way up the hill to their cottage.  The next morning, they did the reverse to go to work again.

To the six of us, our weekend pretending began right there on the flooded road. We were Indians and the rowboat was a handmade birch canoe. We searched the woods along the river banks for buffalo and a place to set up our summer camp ...

In the winter, Grandma and Grampa taught us how to ice skate when the river froze. We loved ice skating and many times we skated all the way down to Will’s Creek Dam and back again.

When we asked him, Grampa would do a perfect large number eight right on the ice just by drawing it with his skates and we were awed. There were so many memories of winter on the river before they moved. One year, I fell on my face on the ice and I had to have four stitches in my chin.

In the summertime, Grampa’s rowboat took us fishing on the river. He usually brought us along to teach there was a right way and a wrong way to do most everything ---and well, that included the right way to fish, too.

Grandma always packed a nice picnic lunch, along with a plastic pitcher of lemonade, or iced tea, with a couple of plastic glasses. We stowed everything under a seat on the rowboat for later.

Now, when fishing, the first rule always was: “Be Real Quiet, so's you won't scare the fish away."

Grampa taught us:

1.    How to thread the worm onto the hook.

2.    How to safely hold the sunfish, or bluegill, so we wouldn’t get stuck.

3.    How to take it off the hook.

4.    How to thread the large clasp through the gills and out the mouth, so we could keep all our fish together on a line in the water on the side of the boat.

We also learned how to scale, clean, and filet the fish when we got back to the cottage so Grandma could "cook 'em right up’".

Out on the boat when it was time for lunch, I remember staring down at the icky worm-goo on my fingers and hands. They also had a strong fishy smell.  How in the world would I eat my sandwich with my hands like that?

Well, there was a right way to do that, too ... and he showed us how you wash up when you're fishing in a rowboat out on the river.

"CJ, don't be such a crybaby."

"Stick your hands over the side of the boat ---right down in the water there. Good. Good. Now rub 'em together. Okay, one more time.  See? They're clean! Now, dry your hands on your shirt and eat your sandwich."

I still miss them every day ...

Published Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
Quora Top Writer 2018
CJ’s World is a reader-supported publication.
If you enjoy reading my work, please
consider a paid subscription. Thank you.