The Meaning of Grandparents

​This sweet grandpa & grandkid picture is from pixabay.com.   While I don’t know the people, I do know the deep contentment and delight of being nap-trapped.

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July 22, 2025

Beloved:
          Grandkids.  I love them so much it hurts.  Hurts in a different way than loving my kids.  That said, here’s what we’re not doing again – we are not making wet kleenex sculptures in the baby pool.  Once the kids went home I netted all the floating tissue jellyfish I could and dumped the pool water down my driveway.  This morning I spent the better part of an hour whisking, sweeping and vacuuming (yes, I am the crazy lady in her pajamas vacuuming her driveway!) dried bits of tissue which had bonded to the blacktop.
          Because they are my grandkids, that’s why, and my role in their raising is widening the boundaries of their lives in ways that give their parents a break and allow them to enjoy the extra-large messes they dream up.  Besides, this is not my first kid to love wet tissue sculpture.  Her aunt soaked rolls of toilet paper to make artworks of all sizes and shapes.  She dried her pieces on cardboard, then dipped them in a paint she made herself, of ground-up sidewalk chalk and water.  Once I moved her studio outside, I was a bigger fan of her work.
          It’s the baby pool, I think, not the whole idea, that I need to reconsider.  When she was done, the 3-year-old grandgirl left no mess to speak of.  A big bucket of water would work just as well, which I can pour through a sieve repeatedly until not even the tiniest jellyfish remain.  They compost easily enough and the water goes on my hostas.  Win, win, win, win, win.  Until she dreams up something new – or her aunt comes over to play.
          Such outrageous privilege, in a world where grandparents are doing the most outrageously dangerous acts just to feed their own little ones.  Grandparents who would gladly sacrifice their own lives if it meant those babies could eat every day.  Twice over if it meant they could play outdoors and go to school as kids are meant to do.  Our own helplessness at the knowledge of it is a far lesser trauma than the people in the midst of such horror, but it is traumatic all the same.  Trauma somewhat eased by supporting the organizations helping.  Trauma also eased by being the best people we can be in our own situations.  For me, it means putting my phone away to be fully present with these little people whose very existence brings me to tears.  It means helping raise them to be decent, thoughtful people who know themselves not as the center of the universe but as members of a community.  It means praying for all kids, parents, grandparents and their neighbors everywhere, for peace – peace inside and outside their homeplaces, that they be safe in the care of those who care for them and protected by the people who have pledged to do so – and remaining hopeful for the day when kids everywhere can play outside with the light and carefree hearts to which they are entitled.
          I pray this day is kind to you in every way.

~peace & prayers,
pastor annette