The Other Side of the Mirror

Grandparents and aging naturally

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

When I was born, I had five sets of living grandparents. As I grew up, I felt like the luckiest girl in the world and I adored each one of them.

I knew who was hard of hearing and when I should talk loudly.

I learned to crochet from one great-grandmother when I was six years-old.

At eight, another great-grandmother let me help her magically turn strawberries and blueberries into jams and jellies that we put in jars on shelves in the basement.

One grandfather was an artist and I loved visiting him. He told me all about when he was young and single and church mouse poor.

He walked all through Europe painting on whatever he could find. Mostly, it was small sheets of tin and large pieces of slate that used to be a part of someone’s roof.

Grampa could point to a painting on one of his walls and tell me stories about the different people, farm animals, and landscapes. There were paintings of ponds with lily pads, farms with fields, and meadows full of flowers.

I loved when he told me all about the different people who lived there in the countries where he painted them. I loved hearing about the many differences from us, as well as their sameness.

Sometimes, he asked me to sit very still and before I knew it, there would be a painting on the wall of someone who looked exactly like me.

I especially loved hearing all of them share stories about growing up. Things were very different for them when they were whatever age I was. My oldest grandparents went everywhere in carriages pulled by horses in all kinds of weather. They never owned a car --and they made it clear they never wanted to.

“Those damned things are noisy, they smell, and they scare the horses!”

Another grandfather was what I would call an outdoorsman. He loved to go hunting, fishing, ice skating, boating, and he was an excellent carpenter. He was the first person to ever call me ‘CJ’ and the one who taught me there was a right way and a wrong way to fish.

At 75, I’m now as old as, or older than, all of those grandparents I loved so dearly when they passed away —as a grandmother myself now, I have proudly come full circle and I’m seeing life from the other side of the mirror. 

When grandchildren visit, it’s now my turn to share the stories only I can tell about what life was like for me when I was their age. We have to keep the lovelight burning …

Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
Quora Top Writer 2018.
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