Chicken Soup for the Grandma's Soul

by Jack Canfield

  I snapped several pictures throughout the morning ceremony, capturing her big smile during each song that had been carefully rehearsed for parents, grandparents and family members. The highlight of the ceremony arrived when my youngest granddaughter marched across the stage to receive her kindergarten diploma.

  She is quiet by nature, but I noticed she had little control over the spring in her step, almost skipping to reach her long-awaited certificate. I thought how beautiful she looked in her new pink-and-white flowered dress and patent leather shoes.

  Following the ceremony, assorted cookies, frosted cupcakes and red fruity punch was served to the young graduates. While munching on sweets, Mishelle introduced me to several classmates in frilly dresses. Her chatter was excited. And rightly so. This was the biggest day of her life.

  Arrangements had been made for the children with working moms to spend the afternoon playing games in a supervised classroom until their parents picked them up. My granddaughter was prepared to join the other children when her mother had to return to work.

  I had an idea. Speaking to her mother, I said, “Rather than stay at school, can Mishelle come home with me?”

  My daughter-in-law thought for a moment.

  “We’ll have lunch together,” I said, quickly adding, “and you can pick her up after work.”

  The instant her mother said yes, Mishelle began jumping up and down, clapping her hands.

  A passerby, noticing her exuberance, said to Mishelle, “I see you’re very excited about graduating today.”

  “No, not that,” she answered.

  The bystander looked puzzled, and my heart soared when my granddaughter said, “I’m going to Grandma’s house.”

  Diane M. Vanover

  Two Dedicated Grandmas

  A laugh is worth one hundred groans in any market.

  Charles Lamb

  Who would have ever imagined they’d do such a thing?

  Joel, my son, was celebrating his fourth birthday. Our family and friends gathered at the local Discovery Zone to party. After pizza and presents, it was time to play.

  The kids crawled into the ball pen, where they literally swam through hundreds of balls. A large tunnel wound up and around the building. One by one, children crawled up and through the tunnel and traveled down its slide, shooting out the end straight into the sea of balls.

  I never saw them make their move, finding their way into the balls. I didn’t even see them enter the tunnel that climbed up to the top of the slide.

  But I heard them!

  My head turned. It couldn’t be . . . they couldn’t have!

  But they had!

  My jaw dropped as I looked up and saw Grandma Mary Lou and Grandma Joyce on all fours, cramped inside the tunnel at the top of the slide.

  “You go first,” Grandma Mary Lou insisted.

  “Well, I have to!” Grandma Joyce replied. “You couldn’t get around me if you wanted too!”

  And then giggles and laughter, like that of schoolgirls, streamed out of the tunnel . . . but no grandmas followed.

  I maneuvered closer and positioned my camera, getting the perfect picture of two dedicated grandmas in ever-so-compromising positions.

  “Are you gonna go?” I asked while looking up the tube. “You two are holding up the line.”

  Within seconds, Grandma Joyce made a splash as she flew down and out the tunnel and was buried beneath the balls.

  “Are you okay? Lady, are you okay,” a bystander asked.

  I held my post and looked up into the tunnel again. Instead of shwooshing down the slide as Grandma Joyce did, Grandma Mary Lou sought a more sophisticated way. With her appendages spread-eagled and securely pressed against the sides of the tunnel, she sought to inch her way down the slide. Her body shook with laughter. Several children, strangers and family members, stood watching to see the last grandma propel from the slide. Wanting to savor the moment, I took more pictures of Grandma Joyce wading through balls and Grandma Mary Lou struggling to maintain somewhat of a ladylike position while contorting down the slide.

  Within minutes, two grandmas emerged from the ball pen. Immediately, they headed directly to the little girls room, no doubt to gather their senses and pull themselves together. I marveled at them as they passed me. Grandma Mary Lou and Grandma Joyce, truly two dedicated grandmas— and certainly the life of the party!

  Janet Lynn Mitchell

  “Let’s come back tomorrow with the grandchildren.”

  Reprinted by permission of Cartoon Resource. ©2004.

  Go-Cart Grandma

  The best hearts are ever the bravest.

  Lawrence Sterne

  When Grandma Emma Kobbeman’s husband died during the Great Depression in 1932 she was just forty-two years old with five children ranging from twelve to twenty-three years old. From that day on, she struggled with poverty, single parenting and trying to find work with a fourth-grade education. She struggled, but she never lost her sense of humor or her spirit of adventure.

  By 1960 Emma was a grandma with twenty-four grandchildren, all of whom lived close to her in northern Illinois. During the late forties, fifties and early sixties we’d gather often for a huge family picnic in a park not far from her home. This beautiful park along the shores of the Rock River was filled with Indian lore and bordered the home of Grandma’s oldest child, my aunt Helen, and her six children.

  One of those family picnics remains crystal clear in my memory. As Grandma’s five children, their spouses and her two dozen grandchildren arrived, carrying enough food for Chief Black Hawk’s entire army, we spread out among the tall pine trees to enjoy the day. Grandma, of course, presided over the festivities from her folding lawn chair, giggling at the antics of whatever baby happened to be the youngest member of our sprawling family.

  Perhaps she ate too many sweets that day and was on a sugar high, or maybe it was the sight of her entire immediate family gathered together that made her feel especially frivolous. Whatever it was, we held our breath when Grandma made the announcement with her hands on her hips and a twinkle in her eye that she was going for a ride on my cousin’s go-cart. She walked straight over to the go-cart and announced in a loud, clear voice to her eldest grandson, “Larry, show me how to run this thing.”

  Larry had built it from scratch. The body looked rough, but the engine was a piece of mechanical art that would have made Mario Andretti proud. When Grandma Kobbeman plopped her ample backside down onto the wooden seat and then stepped on the accelerator with her heavy brown oxfords, that little engine threw itself into world cup competition.

  We cousins watched from a distance as she outran us in the first ten seconds. Grandma whizzed past three dozen giant pine trees, flew across the makeshift track Larry had made and then sailed right into the park’s baseball field. She would have made a home run except she missed second base by fifty feet. She barely missed the popcorn stand and then headed straight for a forested area that led directly to the river. Both arms flailed in panic as Grandma’s heavy oxfords pressed even harder onto the accelerator. She yelled, “Stop this thing! How do I get it to stop?”

  As she headed for a row of poplars, narrowly missing two oversized oak trees, she must have experienced total body panic. Both of her legs shot out in front of her as she released them from their death-grip on the gas pedal. She quickly came to an abrupt halt in front of the sacred Indian mounds at the edge of the water. Chief Black Hawk would have been proud.

  Grandma walked back to the picnic area, gathering up steam for the next two hours, during which time she barely took a breath while she told and retold the story of her go-cart adventure to all the relatives and even some strangers who happened by.

  For a woman who grew up on a small farm in Illinois and watched our country change from horse-and-buggy to men-on-the-moon, Grandma had adapted remarkably well. The automobile, airplane, indoor plumbing, industrialization, mass production, frozen foods, space travel, civil rights and women’s rights were all born d
uring her lifetime. From horse-carts to go-carts, Grandma displayed a keen sense of humor, an unbridled spirit of adventure and a deep faith in God that I will always be glad is part of my heritage.

  Somehow, as I walk through this world as a single parent, I draw strength from Grandma Emma. I have raised four spirited children of my own and am now a single grandmother of eight. I’ve ridden an alpine slide down a steep mountain, put my life in my daughter’s hands on the back of her motorcycle on a busy California highway, snorkeled in two oceans, taken a sunrise flight in a hot-air balloon over the Arizona desert, and traveled alone for two days on two planes and two buses to arrive in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to attend the wedding of a woman I’d met only once.

  As far as I’m concerned, I’ve just begun. I think Grandma Kobbeman would approve heartily that I hope to go parasailing, explore the African continent, hike the Great Wall of China and go white-water rafting. I can almost hear Grandma up there cheering me on, “There’s no way we want to stop this thing!”

  Patricia Lorenz

  Surf’s Up, Grama

  The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste the experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  My forty-five-year-old daughter, Sue Ellen, had been surfing for a couple of months, trying to entice me to go to the coast to try it. I kept putting her off, thinking, Why would they want their almost seventy-year-old mother tagging along on this younger person’s junket? “It will be a great girls’ weekend out,” Sue Ellen coaxed.

  The plan intrigued me . . . and scared me half to death!

  I kept being wishy-washy about the possibility, hoping Dad and I would follow through with our plans for a fall trip and I’d have a good excuse. When this didn’t seem to materialize, however, I reluctantly penciled in the date on my calendar.

  My forty-one-year-old daughter, Diana, and two grand-daughters, ages eighteen and twenty, were all psyched up to go as well. But Diana kept saying, “You’re nuts to try this, Mom; even I’m afraid of getting hurt.” Sue Ellen, on the other hand, was saying, “Go for it, Mom. You can do it, and you’ll always be able to say that you surfed for your seventieth birthday.”

  Well, that did it. My better judgment took a back seat, and I was determined. My husband just rolled his eyes and said, “I hope you know what you’re doing!”

  In the weeks to follow we all did our exercises and lifted weights to strengthen our wimpy muscles. One day when I stopped at Sue Ellen’s, she motioned me into the dining room, where she had tape on her hardwood floors marking the foot placement on a virtual surfboard. She demonstrated the “pop up” procedure, where with one motion you pop up from a flat position on your stomach into a crouched position on the surfboard. Next thing I knew she had me on the floor doing a paddling motion with my hands and arms, then shouted, “Pop up!” Well, let me tell you, I felt like a newborn calf trying to stand!

  The actual day arrived and, with gear and food packed in the car, we drove to Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast. We headed for the local surf shop to get outfitted—wetsuit, booties and gloves first. Next, a surfboard to suit one’s size and ability. A short board is for the more experienced surfer. The long board gives a longer surface to manipulate, which was more my speed. This whole idea was becoming more of a reality every minute.

  The surf coach we hired met us at the shop. Tony, a rugged, blond surfer type, was very laid back and comfortable to be with and seemed to enjoy our little group.

  We followed him a few miles down the road to North Beach, which was in a more protected cove where the wind wasn’t as strong and there were not as many rip tides with their strong undercurrents. We each unloaded our surfboards, strapped on a backpack, and hiked a mile or more down a trail, through the woods to the beach, pairing up to balance two surfboards between us.

  It was a beautiful, warm, sunny weekend, and the area was crawling with funny-looking people in form-fitting wet suits. We donned ours there on the beach and draped all of our clothing over huge driftwood logs that had rolled in.

  Tony was very safety conscious and spent a lot of time on the sand teaching us safety measures and surfing techniques. We learned how to lie on our boards, pop up to the crouch position and do a little two-shoe shuffle to balance and stand upright.

  The waves were four to six feet high that first day, so I opted to stay on the beach and video the others. The second day, the waves had subsided to two to three feet high and I was ready. “You’ll be up and surfing in no time!” said Tony.

  He led us out through the surf and into the swells and held my surfboard while I got on. Lying on my stomach, I started paddling like mad. He gave me a push just as a big wave hit me. I remembered to pop up into my crouch position and I sailed like a bullet in a big whoosh of water toward the beach. I squealed with delight that I was still on my feet—that is, until the fin on the bottom of my board hit the sand, landing me right on my rump. I came up sputtering and coughing like a wounded pup, still leashed by the ankle to my board. Sue Ellen was on the beach filming me coming in. The girls and Tony were all clapping and cheering me on as I limped back to the beach, stifling my sobs of pain.

  Gingerly, I perched myself between two logs so I wouldn’t have to sit on my tailbone, which was steadily pulsating and throbbing. After collecting myself for a while, I thought the cold seawater would help, so I very slowly made my way across the beach and back into the water.

  Standing sideways to the waves so as not to jar my posterior, the cold felt good on my bruised bottom. Just about then, Diana came sailing by on her board, thrilling to her latest ride in on a big wave . . . on her belly! “Diana,” I said, “I can’t bend over to get my board, but if you can get me headed right in the waves, I bet I can do that! I didn’t come here to sit on a log all day.”

  I caught a few good waves belly-boarding, then was happy and proud to leave it at that. Tony said he was surprised that I’d gotten up the first time and stayed up that long; many of his students didn’t even make it up the first time. A little praise did wonders for my bruised ego, if not for my bruised bottom.

  After several hours of fun in the surf, it was time to leave. We trekked across the beach, up over the rocks on the bluff, and hiked the mile through the woods. It hurt to lift one leg up over the moguls, but with Sue Ellen giving me a pull from her end of the board, we got to the car and were mighty glad to be there. Those pillows for the ride back to Portland felt mighty good.

  After about a week of a painful posterior, I checked in with the doctor. “Just badly bruised,” he said. I’ve had a lot of fun telling the story, from my doctor who said, “You did this how?” to the nurse at the injury clinic who said, “At your age? Wish I dared to try that!”

  A sensible senior perhaps I’m not, but in spite of having to sit on a pillow for a couple of weeks, I’m glad my good judgment temporarily took a back seat, that I took the challenge and had this fun “senior moment.” I read somewhere that “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow! What a ride!’”

  It certainly was a ride to remember with daughters and granddaughters. They’re each ready to ride the waves with gusto at the slightest mention of “Surf’s up, Grama!”

  Pam Trask

  Grandma and the Snow Bank

  Grandmothers are a special gift to children.

  G. W. Curtis

  Brian banged the door behind him and ran into the kitchen holding his new toy. “Grandma! Come outside and try my pogo stick!”

  I shook my head. “Grandmas are breakable, Brian. I’d better not.”

  Disappointment drowned his hopeful expression, and he slouched out of the room. As I watched him go, my memory rewound to my own childhood.

  In 1952, I’d been sent to stay with my grandparents. My little sister was gravely i
ll with something called “acute hemolytic anemia,” which I could barely pronounce, much less understand. Mother’s hands were full as she juggled nursing chores and chasing after my brother, an active preschooler. At ten years old, I was deemed responsible enough to travel alone the length of the state and not be “too much trouble” to Grandma and Grandpa.

  I’d never traveled by myself, never been away from my family and never attended a city school. But there I was on an airplane bound for Portland, where my grandparents were waiting.

  Grandma looked the same every time I saw her—round, firm and fully packed into a corset. She wore dresses and “sensible” black lace-up shoes, and she confined her flyaway hair in a bun at the back of her head. Born in Sweden some seventy-odd years before, she never quite conquered her Scandinavian accent.

  Once we arrived at my grandparents’ house, I settled my belongings in the familiar upstairs guestroom. The thought of having to make new friends and fit in with a strange fifth-grade class dimmed the joy of being at Grandma’s without having to share her with my brother and sister.

  The night before I started school, Grandma rolled my straight brown hair in rag strips so I’d wake up with curls. As I fell asleep, my head felt lumpy and so did my insides.

  The next morning, jagged icicle teeth grinned at me from the eaves outside the bedroom window. Rattling and clanking, the radiator hissed in the chilly room. I huddled close to it and reached for warm clothes.

  Grandma had laid out a brown plaid skirt and yellow sweater, along with a pair of brown wool kneesocks. I pulled on the skirt and sweater, but left the kneesocks untouched on the bed. Everyone at my old school wore anklets. Grandma’s arguments couldn’t persuade me to change my mind. I was sure I would be branded as weird if I showed up wearing stockings cuffed at the knee.