A New Golden Age

This is going to be a special day.  Our grandson Matt and his wife Emily, along with their two children (our first and only “great” granddaughters, so far), Addison and Delaney,  have moved back into the neighborhood.  Instead of being eight hours away, they will now be only an hour away!    

We will have lunch with our daughter Rachel and Matt’s family today.  Addison is two and a half years old now and I have a feeling she will remember us from our last visit with her two months ago.  I hope so.  This will be Delaney’s first encounter with us—she was born just last month.  This will our very first time meeting her!  How fortunate we are to bask in this golden age of great-grandparents—whatever that is!

I have but a vague recollection of my paternal and maternal “great" grandmothers.  I do not recall having any real relationship with them.  Both “great” grandmothers died during my early childhood years.  Will it be the same for my “great” granddaughters?  It is very likely that it will be so.  Addison and Delaney may only have a vague recollection of their Great Grandad when they reach their maturity.

I don’t want to be a vague recollection for them, but then I really don’t have much control or choice over the matter.  We’ll just have to wait and see how things go.  I hope, of course, that I can somehow have a significance rather than be a vague recollection during the brief time we have together.  I’m not at all sure how to be of  “significance” or what I even mean by being “significant,” but I am pondering the matter just now.

Addison and Delaney are far too young to hear an old man talk about what he has seen and experienced in his longevity.  Even when they are a wee bit older they won’t be able to hear or understand those historical occasions—like when I watched a man walk on the moon on a black and white television screen or saw “Sputnik” fly over.  Given that  kind of stuff, they’ll just remember me as being an insignificant, long-winded, old man.  What can I give them, what can I share with them, what can I do for them that will be  really significant? I can do what we are all called to do as parents, grandparents, great grandparents, friends, neighbors and fellow human beings—I can love them and in loving them perhaps leave a message for their later years (not of their Great Grandad’s significance) but, rather, this—that love is the most significant thing we  can give to one another.