Grandparent

“ It is an alliance not to be treated casually; it demands nourishment, and storytelling by a family's elders is an essential ingredient.
Grandparent-Grandchild Interview
A fun way to open lines of communications while visiting grandchildren, be they nearby or far away, is the audiotaped interview. Living nearby, the grandchild knows grandma and grandpa, they're part of everyday life. Far away is different, geography causes gaps. The one-on-one interview builds self-esteem and confidence in a youngster. ”

“ While it is true that inheritance is most clearly recognized in those characters in which offspring resemble their parents, even characters in which they differ from their parents may be inherited, as is plainly seen when, in any character, a child resembles a grandparent or a more distant ancestor more than either parent. ”

“ Starting with your two parents and four grandparents and going backward multiplying as you go, the sixteen great-grandparents are already almost unmanageable, and a century or two further back you find them irrepressibly overflowing your little island and spreading themselves across Europe as thickly and as adhesively as so much jam, until in days a trifle more remote not a person living of white skin but was your father, unless he was your mother. ”

“ In so choosing, the youngster notifies the grandparents through his/her appeal that they, the grandparents, are wanted and needed. It's Grandchild reaching out and inviting Grandma and Grandpa into his or her world-with affection.
In single-parent families and in families in which both parents work away from home, there might not be as many opportunities to pass along traditions, awareness, and values. Be that as it may, throughout history the family and tribal elders passed their knowledge and codes of conduct on to those who, as part of the natural process, carry the torches into the future. ”

“ I know a good deal about their life after I was born and their life before I was born. I have a fair notion of my grandparents' parents, and I know something of the way of life of the generation behind that one. I have been told and I have read. Of course there are presently ancestors of whom I have been told nothing, and behind these countless others. Of course I know that people often imaginatively share the experience of [Pg 99] parents and kindred. They say: 'It must have been so and so with my mother and my father—or with my grandparents—or my ancestors generally. ”

“ Above all do we fulfil a duty toward our children when we give the place of honor to the grandparents. Nothing speaks to a child with so much force, or so well develops his modesty, as to see his father and mother, on all occasions, preserve toward an old grandfather, often infirm, an attitude of respect. ”

“ But where a child is born with plenty of relatives who can be called upon for advice and affection and assistance in event of his or her becoming an orphan, godparents are often chosen from among them. Nothing could be more senseless, however, than choosing grandparents, since the relationship is as close as can be anyway, and the chances that the parents will outlive their own parents make such a choice still more unsuitable.
In France, the godmother is considered, next to the parents and grandparents, the nearest relative a child can have. ”

“ Understandably, in these single-parent households, persons outside the nuclear family are called upon with increasing frequency to assist in the everyday tasks of child rearing. In many cases, grandparents play an important role. ”

“ Grandparents are our continuing tie to the near-past, to the events and beliefs and experiences that so strongly affect our lives and the world around us. Whether they are our own or surrogate grandparents who fill some of the gaps in our mobile society, our senior generation also provides our society a link to our national heritage and traditions. ”

“ In this way the featural and mental characteristics of relatives as far removed as great-grand-parents or great-granduncles, as well as grandparents and uncles, are seen to appear in children even when young, to be finally either accentuated and made prominent, or else possibly outgrown or otherwise overcome as the years go by, and as the later parental determining powers and the corresponding environment come to manifest their influence. ”

“ Grandparents generally accept and enjoy the many roles into which they have been cast. One of the many is that they are the grandparents of all their grandchildren, not just of one whom they chose to be their favorite. Favoritism invites disaster. ”

“ Despite the many changes, grandparents remain an important source of knowledge and stability in American families. Grandparents help us understand the past and encourage us to hope for the future. They preserve and strengthen the values we hold most dear-compassion and generosity, responsibility and tradition. These relationships between generations have always been central to the happiness and well-being of young and old alike. ”

“ Henry Ward Beecher once said that since so much depends upon one's ancestors, a man ought to be very careful in choosing his grandparents; and there is a vast deal of truth suggested by this statement. ”

“ It is known from many quantitative studies that in physical heredity, the influence of the paternal grandparents and the influence of the maternal grandparents is equal; on the average one pair will contribute no more to the grandchildren than the other. If mental qualities are due rather to early surroundings than to actual inheritance, this equality of grandparental influence is incredible in the royal families where Dr. ”

“ This important law appears principally active among many lower animals and plants, and manifests itself in contrast to the former in the fact that the offspring are not like their parents, but very dissimilar, and that only the third or a later generation becomes similar to the first. The grandchildren are like the grandparents, but quite unlike the parents. ”

“ The children call her grandma, and I heard Archie explaining to the gardener’s son, the other day, that she was really his grandmother, because she was the mother of his first father!
To me the past seems all a dream, and when I look about me upon my home, and hear the voices of my children shouting on the lawn, and see their father coming up the walk, and know that he will soon be at my side, bending over me in the old, teasing, loving way, I cannot realize that I am she who once plodded so drearily through the London fog and rain, hunting for work with which to get my daily bread. ”

“ I see all around me happy; the grandfather-to-be has become a child again, trespassing on the grandchild's place; the father wears a grave and anxious look; they are all most attentive to me, all talk of the joy of being a mother. ”

“ Grandpa, I remember that my brother wrote a piece last Christmas, which you called Brotherly Love.—I wish I could remember it.
Grandfather. I recollect it;—you shall learn to repeat it.
William. I shall like that; pray let me hear it now, sir.
Grandfather. You shall.
“The children of our family should [Pg 113] be like the fingers on a hand; each help the other, and each in his separate station promote the good of the whole. The joy of one should be the joy of the whole. Children in a house should agree together like the birds in a nest, and love each other.” ”

“ As I lay welcome kisses on baby's wee brow!
A Grandmother, I? How the bright years have flown
Since I was a child scarce to maidenhood grown!
"And now in my arms, looking up in my eyes,
With orbs that are bluer than June's sunny skies,
Behold my own grandchild! Ah, verily, youth
'On double wings flies,' Grandpa says in good truth,
"As he looks in my face where no longer the rose
In my once dimpled cheeks in its loveliness grows,
And marks the white locks mingling faster each day
With the brown that old Time is fast stealing away. ”

“ My dear father, I am so glad to see you!—grandmother, it is refreshing to find you looking as though you bade defiance to time;—and you, my little cousin, how much you have improved! How lovely you have grown! A year does a great deal for one's appearance. ”

“ She has an old maid and an old gardener, and—don't you know—she's the sort of woman who likes to sit down under a portrait of your great-grandfather, in a dim parlor full of mahogany and rose jars, with her black silk skirts spreading about her, and an Old Blue cup in her hand, and talk family,—how cousin this married a man whose people aren't anybody, and cousin that is outraging precedent by naming her child for her husband's side of the house. ”

“ For as family heirs and those whom we have enumerated as equivalent to family heirs have a priority over all other claimants, it is clear that a great-grandson or great-great-grandson is preferred to a brother, or the father or mother of the deceased; and yet the father and mother, as we have remarked above, are in the first degree of cognation, and the brother is in the second, while the great-grandson and great-great-grandson are only in the third and fourth respectively. ”

“ ELIZABETH AND VICTORIA. Every generation compared to the age it immediately succeeds is but a further lapse from Paradise. Every grandfather is of necessity a wiser, kinder, nobler being that the grandson doomed to follow him—every grandmother chaster, gentler, more self-denying, more devoted to the beauty of goodness, than the giddy, vain, thoughtless creature, who in her time is sentenced to be grandmother to somebody, whose still increased defects will only serve to bring out the little lustre of the gentlewoman who preceded her. ”

“ But one spring day came the news of a grandson, called Benjamin after his grandfather, and an urgent letter from their boy himself, enclosing a prettily and humbly worded note from the new strange daughter, begging for an English nurse. She told them that she had now no father and no mother, for they had died before the baby came, and if she might love her husband’s parents a little she would be glad. ”

“ My grandfather, Lord Privilege, who had taken no more notice of my father than occasionally sending him a basket of game, had latterly often invited him to the house, and had even requested some day or another to see his wife and family. He had also made a handsome addition to my father’s income, which the death of my two uncles had enabled him to do. Against all this my uncle’s wife was reported to be again in the family way. ”

“ For you've got his blue eyes and his brown hair and his sweet little ways, and Grandmother loves you—once for yourself and once for him."
"But where is the little boy now, Grandmother?"
"He's a man now, darling. He's your own father."
Every Sunday, Grandmother went to church. After breakfast there was a flurry of dressing, with an opening and shutting of doors up-stairs, and Grandfather would be down-stairs in the kitchen, blacking his Sunday boots. On Sunday his beard looked whiter than on other days, but that was because he seemed so much blacker everywhere else. ”

“ Little mittens had to be made for our hands. Little jackets and caps for the boys, in which all took an interest, and grandpa, too, did his share. He made little fur suits for the boys, caps and all. Father would read to us from the big family Bible and explain to us as he read. Then he would sing the hymns he loved so well, mother joining in. Then grandpa would sing with mother their French glee songs, while us children would join in. Then grandpa would rock me in the low cradle and the boys grew [Pg 43] impatient because it kept the fur suits from being made so fast. ”

“ Impediments.—No man shall marry his mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, stepmother, sister, grandfather’s wife, son’s wife, grandson’s wife, wife’s mother, wife’s grandmother, wife’s daughter, wife’s granddaughter, brother’s daughter, sister’s daughter, father’s sister or mother’s sister.
No woman shall marry her father, grandfather, son, grandson, stepfather, brother, grandmother’s husband, daughter’s husband, granddaughter’s husband, husband’s father, husband’s grandfather, husband’s son, husband’s grandson, brother’s son, sister’s son, father’s brother or mother’s brother. ”

“ Alsie, suppose you and Emily offer to walk out with grandmother when she goes to meet Aunt Martha and little James, on the five o'clock train, and as soon as you get her safely out of the house Uncle Dick can bring the pie and other things into the library, where we can all have a hand in fixing it up later. Of course I shall carry the key to the library the rest of the evening, for after keeping the secret this long, I am determined that mother shall have as much of the surprise and pleasure as father. ”

“ Yes, father; very sound.
The Uncle. What shall we do while we are waiting?
The Grandfather. Waiting for what?
The Uncle. Waiting for our sister.
The Father. You see nothing coming, Ursula?
The Eldest Daughter [at the window] . Nothing, father.
(p. 271)
The Father. Not in the avenue? Can you see the avenue?
The Daughter. Yes, father; it is moonlight, and I can see the avenue as far as the cypress wood.
The Grandfather. And you do not see anyone?
The Daughter. No one, grandfather.
The Uncle. What sort of a night is it?
The Daughter. Very fine. Do you hear the nightingales?
The Uncle. Yes, yes. ”

“ Therefore, a grandfather with his grandsons is disqualified because a father and son are a first and first just like a person with his brother. A great-grandfather with his great-grandson is valid because it is a third with a first. ”

“ The Grandfather. Yes.
The Uncle. That would complete one's happiness!
The Grandfather. No one has come into the room?
The Father. No; no one has come in.
The Grandfather. And your sister is not here?
The Uncle. Our sister has not come.
The Grandfather. You want to deceive me.
The Uncle. Deceive you?
The Grandfather. Ursula, tell me the truth, for the love of God!
The Eldest Daughter. Grandfather! Grandfather! what is the matter with you?
The Grandfather. Something has happened! I am sure my daughter is worse!...
The Uncle. Are you dreaming?
The Grandfather. You do not want to tell me!... ”