Grandparents Day

Posted by Vulnadia on Oct 15, 2010 at 08:47 AM Okay, let's start at the beginning of our story: My kids really do NOT have any grandmothers left in the family. The last one we had was my husband's step-mother who decided to become an active grandparent in retrospect only after her marriage counselor suggested that it would be a nice couples activity for she and her husband to participate in together (as if they didn't already have plenty of things that they do together, she had to drag my kids into it.) So after about 8 months of active grandparenting on her part, she one day bails on ye ole father-in-law with not so much as word one to the kids she had played "Grandmother" quite actively for months. Let me stop & go back about 12 years to another little boy who also grew up sans Grandmothers-my eldest. He had problems when he was 4 and newly in school because all of the other kids has Grandmothers who took care of them and he was the odd-man out and they all made horrid fun of him because of it for some reason, making it very awkward for him. He wouldn't figure out this lady was his Grandmother for another 3 or 4 years actually (he always just thought it was his cousin's Grandmother and not his due to inactivity!) Back to the here and now. My kids do have 2 Grandparents left that they DO know, my Daddy known to them as "GrandGary" and my husband's Daddy known as "Grandpa Don". They both do their best to be active Grandparents, but one is newly divorced (accounting for the recent hole in the Grandmother department) and my Mama died before my eldest was born and my own Daddy never remarried. The other issue is that my Daddy also is raising my sister's 3 kids, the youngest of which happens to be only 9months older than my trio! Well, this past week, Teacher sent home a project that made me cringe after our history with Grandparents...a family tree to be put together and sent back for display on Grandparents Day at school today, complete with a little program and everything... I scrambled to figure out what I would do to fill the blanks...I mean, it only includes Grandparents then the immediate family, but that means that there are 2 very HUGE glaringly obvious blanks where Grandmothers should be displayed...and I don't even have a picture of my father-in-law to put in his spot...what should I do? Well, I did have my Daddy drum up a picture of my Mama so that we could put her on it (even though they missed meeting my Mama by absolute years (poor Bregon missed meeting her by a little over a month before he was born.) Sadly, the only picture Daddy could find was out of the album from right after Mama got sick, so just seeing the picture makes me sad, but the babies won't realize. So, there I was, with this stack of pictures times three...even a picture of the family pet (yes I omitted one of Blanche the Tarantula in lieu of the cute smiley picture of my little doggie from her adoption day photo!) Armed with a bottle of rubber cement, I tackled the project trying to stay chipper and positive about the entire thing, worrying all the while that they will have huge blank spots where the rest of the grandparents should be but aren't... So, to combat the holes, I put the picture of Daddy that he had meant for me to cut my niece out of in the center, leaving Killian in the picture too...I wrote his name "GrandGary" with a tiny arrow pointing to him and then did the same for Killian. This took up the center top and covered the other Granddaddy spot...oh well, sorry GrandpaDon, no pic available...and thankfully the kids haven't asked after Grandma Jan since she left in August... In her spot, I put a group shot of the babies taken the day they came home from the NICU (Kian and Vivienne came home together last) and they are all 3 sleeping in the middle of what appears to be a very large pack-n-play...but fact is it's the babies who are tiny making the playpen seem HUGE!!! I filled in the other blanks with groupshots of their cousins that live with Daddy and gave their names with cute swirly arrows to go with it. I managed to make the page look purposeful in spite of the blank boxes...they were all covered up, even the labels that would give-way to the fact that there are huge blankspots in their family tree...it even looked cute when I was all done... This morning when I got up, I dreaded taking them to school. Their teacher was just sure that my Daddy would be there today for them, but I had my doubts... I know it sounds weird, but I did...you see, growing up, Daddy never made much if many of Bregon's functions like this, and I had no idea what would happen today, but the Teacher had told the babies he would be there and they believed him. I was MORTIFIED at the idea that he might not be able to make it, afterall, he's a single Granddaddy raising 3 grandkids each at different schools and has his own business on top of it all. As we pulled into the school driveway, I distributed totebags and we all unbuckled and I kissed the babies good-bye for their day as I waited for the teacher on duty to wade through the sea of people in front of the library there with their Grandchildren for the bookfair... As the kids piled out of the car, I looked up to see my Daddy standing there waving at them with the biggest smile on his face. HE MADE IT!!! They all looked soo happy as I drove away. I'm one happy Mommie today! It's amazing how things change over time and sometimes, just sometimes, it all works out for the better.