Pandemic grandparenting: overwhelming sadness, but some sweetness, too
Millions of grandparents have been torn from their grandkids. Others are responsible for raising them, and worry about who’ll finish the job if they can’t.
Amid a crisis, a serenade
Collin Fowler of Albuquerque, New Mexico serenaded his quarantined grandparents with bagpipes to mark their 55th wedding anniversary. He stood in the middle of their cul-de-sac, while they listened from the safety of their stoop.
“How do families decide what to do?”
Here’s an excellent article from The Washington Post by a retired professor who typically cares for her grandkids after school. Last week, she was “laid off” from this job for her own protection.
These grandkids ride to school in style
Five of Doug Hayes’s ten grandkids are old enough to ride the school bus he bought them for Christmas, which he’s calling the “Grandfather Express.”
“Anne-Christine can rest easy now”
A murderer admits to his crime, but his victim’s mother—who is seeking custody of her grandson—fights on.
The grandmas who snorkel with snakes
Some days, they take care of their grandchildren. Other days, they prowl the bottom of the sea in search of venomous snakes.
“We stand in solidarity with the youngsters”
Concerned about the impact of climate change on their grandchildren, elders in London have taken to the streets.
He’s taking his 89-year-old grandma to each and every national park
Joy Ryan had never seen the ocean or climbed a mountain. Then her grandson took her on the road.
Four generations, one race
An 88-year-old woman, her daughter, her granddaughter, and her great-granddaughter recently teamed up for a 5K in Albany.
The 97-year-old blogger of Seattle
“Anyone who thinks of old age as a time of stagnation just hasn’t been there,” writes Doris Carnevali.
A prom for sixth-graders and their grandparents
A middle school in Ohio has a novel take on the Senior Prom.
At this South Korean school, children and their grandmas learn together
Faced with declining enrollment, an elementary school in rural South Korea is welcoming grandmothers, many of whom were not permitted to attend school when they were girls.
The grandma and the pythons
“I don’t think it was anything special, to be honest,” said Faye Morgan, 81, after wresting two pythons from a backyard grill.
Inspired by her grandpa, she fights the fires of Cleveland
Lauren Phillips is the first woman to join the ranks of the city’s firefighters in 30 years.
The year in grandparents
In 2018, I wrote about a caravan of grandparents who stormed the Texas-Mexico border to protest Trump’s treatment of migrant children, Gabriel García Márquez’s memories of his grandmother, and many other topics.
“I was worried about my grandkids”
Marian Shields Robinson didn’t want to move to Washington, D.C. when her daughter, Michelle Obama, became First Lady in 2009. But her grandchildren, Sasha and Malia, were only seven and ten, and Marian was worried about them, she said in a recent interview with Gayle King of CBS This Morning.
The Scottish grandmother and the wonky donkey
The world has fallen in love with the way Janice Clark reads to her grandson.
A loving grandpa in a hateful world
Maurice Stallard was murdered in Kentucky last week while shopping with his grandson at Kroger’s. The alleged killer, who is white, likely targeted him because he was black.