Check out my Story in Chicken Soup for the Soul!
Just me and the book I’m published in! So excited! Pick up Chicken Soup for the Soul: Young at Heart at your local bookstore or get the ebook. Thank you Chicken Soup for the Soul! I am so enjoying reading ALL the stories in Young at Heart. Maybe its because I can relate to so many of the stories. Check out my story below but be sure to get your copy because every story is full of laughter, and wisdom.
A Grandparents Job
While my daughter did not have any grandfathers, she was blessed with two wonderfully diverse grandmothers. “Nana” and “Momo” each played an important part in my daughter’s life. I was reminded of this on a particular evening when feeding the dogs, cats, bird, overseeing homework, dinner, and baths that was the usual organized chaos in our household. My mother, Nana, had offered to give my daughter her bath. While I cleared the dinner dishes I heard the usual laughter and exclamations that accompanied the bath time of a 5 year old followed by a period of what seemed to be a serious whispered conversation.
My mom came out to the kitchen and joined me in putting away the leftovers. She told me that she and Francesca had a talk.
“I just want you to know that everything is all right” my mom said.
“What do you mean everything is alright! I didn’t know anything was wrong.”
“No, it’s all good. She just needed to talk” my mom said with confidence I certainly did not feel.
“Mom, I really need to know what she talked to you about”
“Oh, that’s between a granddaughter and her Nana”.
We had been through a lot in my daughter’s first five years of life with my mother’s cancer, my husband’s cancer and losing his job. We worried about how she processed all this medical mayhem and stress that had transpired. We were always very open, answering any questions in a way a child her age could understand. So why could she not approach us? I felt a stab in my heart, followed by the immediate sense of fear that someone had hurt her. When I pressed my mom about it, she said not to worry. Not worry? Really?
I turned to my mom and said “Why couldn’t she ask me?”
My mother replied that she had asked Francesca the very same question to which she replied, “I know my Mom and Dad love me but their job is to decide if I am doing right or wrong. You, Nana, just need to love me.”
I never did find out what that whispered conversation was about – my mother has since passed and Francesca can’t remember. I was grateful that my daughter had a confident she could trust and so could I.
It has been 32 years since that conversation but since I became a “Nana” I totally understand. I hope that I can be the confident to my grandsons that my mother was to my daughter.
For a grandparent’s job is not to judge but to simply love. OH, how I love my job.
And be sure to get a copy of my book Surviving Medical Mayhem – Laughing When It Hurts and find out how to laugh, learn and lean on God. You can get your copy at www.SurvivingMedicalMayhem.com