Becoming "Gran"

For those of you that don't know, I became a "Gran" for the first and second time this year.  I was very unsure about this role because I felt like I was still raising two of my kids and I would not be able to devote enough time to being a proper grandma.

I grew up with a Great-Grandmother who died at 98 years of age, two Grandmothers who died at 93 and 94 years of age and a Step-Grandmother who died at 88 years of age.  I had plenty of "grandmothering" from them and the best thing about this is I learned so much from each one of them and have so many memories to share with my kids and grandkids.

I would say that I spent every day after school with my Grandma Bonnie.  After my Grandpa Garnet died, Grandma Bonnie moved to town from the country.  I would head to her house after school because we lived out in the country and our bus ride was usually 45 minutes to an hour.  I would wait at her house with my sister until my mom came to pick us up after she got off work.  Grandma would fix us a "sandwidge" and a glass of Pepsi and a Little Debbie snack and to finish off our afterschool snack, she would let us get a Lemon Drop from the crystal candy dish!  I would plop down in front of the tv, sucking on my Lemon Drop, and we would watch The Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island and I Dream of Jeannie.  My sister would always want to switch the channel and watch The Partridge Family and Family Affair, but I didn't like those shows as well so I'd usually cut out quilt squares in the kitchen where my Grandma Bonnie was working on a quilt or crocheting an afghan.  My Grandma Bonnie was a great quilter and a great crocheter  I have a quilt she made me when I was a little girl, one when I got married and each of my four kids has a quilt that she made.  I also ended up with an afghan she made when my Great-Grandma Annie went to the nursing home.  She was always cold!
I feel like I spent every weekend with my Grandma Nita and what seemed like all summer.  We would feed horses each evening and I would look for newborn kittens in the hayloft while she watered her horses.  I caught tadpoles down at the pond and made mudpies.  I learned to become a teacher from this awesome role model.  I would go with her every day to summer school where she taught third graders who were struggling in reading and math.  Grandma Nita drove a 1965 Mustang so I'm pretty sure she was the coolest!  Many hours were spent upstairs in her country home playing restaurant or teacher.  When I played restaurant I always had old 33 record albums playing in the background while I served my guests!  When I would play school, I would create my "grade book" with scrap paper and a fountain pen and ink.  My pretend students were my actual classmates so it was quite fun to grade their papers.  Looking back I was not a very fair teacher when it came to grading and sending students to the principal's office for swats!!   I would give A's to my pretend students who were my current classmates that I liked and I would give D's and F's to the naughty kids in my class or to the ones that I didn't care for!! I am glad I learned compassion and fairness over the years!

When it came time to stay with Great-Grandma Annie, we didn't usually stay overnight because she didn't ever learn how to drive so she didn't have a car in case of an emergency.  I learned my love of the Iris flower and daffodils from her and have many of her Iris in my yard that I dug up from hers and transplanted.  When my sister and I played at Grandma Annie's, we would play doctor.  Grandma Annie recycled everything and never threw anything away.  Her empty pill bottles would be used to fill prescriptions for our patients.  Grandma Annie's freezer was always full of Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chips because she always baked Chocolate Chip cookies.  We would use the chocolate chips as pills!!  I'm laughing as I write this.  I knew I was a creative individual, but had no idea the creativeness dated back so far!! ha ha  Grandma's Chocolate Chip cookies were by far the best I ever had.  Sorry, Sheila and Carin Gosch, your Chocolate Chip cookies are amazing, but there is something about Annie Taylor's cookies that are just a bit better!  While hanging out at Grandma Annie's, we would also look through the Sears, Wards, or JCPenney catalog.  She had them all lined up the stairwell.  I recently gave my daughter, Hannah, the 1998 year Sears catalog.  I told her it was one that came from Grandma Annie's and it would be fun for her to look back at the items for sale during the year she was born!!  While my sister and I looked through the catalogs, we would have scrap paper and we would play "furnish a house".  We had glue and tape and pens and crayons.  We would cut out of the catalog the things we wanted to put in our dream house and we did this for hours all while Jim Neighbors or Elvis played in the background on the record album player.  I don't think we ever watched television at Grandma Annie's because there were so much fun and creativity going on that we never desired to watch tv.

When it came time to visit our step-grandma Treva, who we named Grams, we would have a blast going out to the chicken house where there was always chicken eggs in the incubator.  They lived on a farm south of Joplin.  We always played yard darts and played with my Aunt Vicki's horses while we visited.

There are many memories I have of each grandmother and I feel I can never live up to being as cool and fun and loving as they were.  I was fortunate to have my grandmothers living close by and each lived a very long life that I was able to be a part of.  The things I learned, the bajillion things we did growing up, I can only hope I do half the things with my own grandkids!


Enter Archer James Stover, born June 27th of 2017, my first grandson!  Enter Beau Morgan Adams, born November 28th of 2017, my second grandson!  I am doing this "Gran" thing and I am doing my best at being fun and cool and I'm only getting started!  Somebody stop me!!!!!!!!

Archer

Beau