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.
An oldster at home is a treasure to your own.
Chinese proverb
The boarding school from hell
When my grandparents went abroad in the fall of 1958, they found two very different Swiss boarding schools for their kids.
Step-grandparents, make yourselves known!
Little is known about step-grandparents, even thought they’re increasingly common. If you’re a step-grandparent, what’s it like?
My grandmother, the Francophile
My mom’s mom read everything in French. Even though she wasn’t French, didn’t live in France, and didn’t learn the language until well into middle age. Best of all, she never bragged about it.
The ‘pasta grannies’ still roll it by hand
To document the dying art of making pasta from scratch, British journalist Vicky Bennison has filmed hundreds of Italian grandmas in their kitchens. The result, she says, is a “Noah’s Ark” of knowledge and skills that might otherwise have been lost.
The new American family, animated
The millions of American kids who live with their grandparents will recognize themselves in The Casagrandes, a new cartoon from Nickelodeon.
6 new novels about kids and their grandparents
In these recent novels for preteens—by some of the best children’s authors of our time—grandparents give kids the inspiration, strength, and love they need to navigate a perilous world.
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.
The difference being a mother of a single daughter is that you become part of her family—which I think is very different from grandmothers in general … We come, we stay for a few days, there’s no tension about the son-in-law who’s wondering when we’re gonna leave, when he’s gonna have his family back. We have much more access to the grandchildren.
Judi, grandmother of four, Massachusetts
Anna Quindlen has learned to butt out
“Hang back,” Quindlen, who has two grandkids, advises grandparents in her latest book.
A prom for sixth-graders and their grandparents
A middle school in Ohio has a novel take on the Senior Prom.