Nurturing the Next Great Generation

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A grandchild’s catastrophic illness. A grandfather’s path back to God.

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When someone asks, “What’s it like to be a grandpa?” the response is usually “Fantastic! The best thing ever.” I’ve spoken with men who jumped for joy in the middle…

When someone asks, “What’s it like to be a grandpa?” the response is usually “Fantastic! The best thing ever.”

I’ve spoken with men who jumped for joy in the middle of a restaurant, or wept openly, when they heard they were going to become grandpas. The whole world changes, exploding outward in a way that the word “joy” can barely contain. Many of us thought we could never love anyone, or any single thing, as much as our kids. Grandkids, however, take the cake. Suddenly, the circle of those we care deeply about expands. Love expands. And the more grandkids we are lucky to have, the larger that circle of loving care becomes.

But as with all things tied to this thing we call love there is complexity, and sometimes heartbreak.

With each new addition to our family the possibility of pain and sorrow grows. The yin and yang of grandparenthood are inseparable. We all know this is what we signed up for, which doesn’t make it any easier.

The need to learn about the full range of grandpa experiences led me one fall day to a coffee shop in Newton, Massachusetts, to talk with Eric Behr. I’d heard a little of Eric’s story from my brother, Nick, who conducted Eric in a gospel group called the Mystic Chorale. What Eric shared with me that day added a new dimension to my understanding of what it truly means to be a grandpa.

Eric Behr

 

Eric, 76, is lean and fit, with a lined and thoughtful face, grey hair, and a melodious baritone voice that no doubt was a great addition to my brother’s chorus. Eric is the father of three, grandfather of six, a successful folk musician and newly retired accountant. I started our conversation at the beginning, diving into his family history, seeking to find the influences that helped shape him into who he is today.

Eric never knew his grandfathers (although he did recollect that a brother of one grandfather survived the Titanic; that’s a whole different story that may require its own book). Eric’s father was outgoing and charismatic, a frustrated actor who finally found his stage as a diplomat, serving as the first liaison between the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Quiet by nature, Eric’s mother absolutely hated being a diplomat’s wife.

The two things Eric’s parents had in common were that they were listed in The Social Register, and both drank heavily.

Eric described his dad, Frederic Howell Behr, as a “world-class womanizer,” made worse by the fact that he flaunted his infidelities. “He rubbed my mother’s nose in it.” On more than one occasion, Frederic took his mistress on an overnight trip on the family yacht, and brought Eric along.
“My parents were constantly screeching at each other,” Eric said. When punishment was meted out to Eric by his parents, his dad used a belt, his mother a silver hairbrush.

“My childhood,” Eric said, “was completely overcome with anxiety.”

Eric’s father died of lung cancer at the age of 41, when Eric was just 14. For Eric, this was a major rupture at a critical time of his life. Deeply flawed as his father was, the man still had a tremendous influence on him. “So, I walked away from God. I knew that God existed and God was supposed to be good, and when God took my father that was the end.”

Bereft of spirituality, and inheriting his parents’ love for booze, Eric struggled with addiction for decades. Attending college at Goddard with fellow students he described as “brilliant fuckups,” Eric delved into a life of alcohol, drugs and cigarettes. But Eric also did everything possible to turn his life around. He became committed to rigorous 12-step recovery programs in 1986, and within a year he kicked alcohol and drugs for good. Eric became a musician, co-founded and grew a successful accounting firm (what Eric calls his “side gig”) got married to his lovely wife, Nancy, and together raised their kids.

For Eric, the trauma of his childhood has informed his loving—and sober—approach to being a good parent and grandparent.

He’s been there for his grandkids’ soccer games and all kinds of family gatherings. There is no screeching in his long marriage. And every new grandchild to appear on the scene has added a new layer to his happiness. His granddaughter, Molly, was born in 2017.

One sunny summer day in 2018 when the family was vacationing in Martha’s Vinyard, Molly’s mother, Cassy, noticed that her daughter was walking with her head tilted to one side. A doctor said the issue was likely muscular, but after further tests they heard the kind of news that every parent dreads. It was not just any cancer, the disease Siddhartha Mukherjee called The Emperor of All Maladies. Molly had a rare form of brain tumor, an anaplastic ependymoma.

Surgeons were able to remove ninety-eight percent of the tumor, but the remaining two percent was wrapped like a serpent around Molly’s brainstem.

No treatment known to mankind in one of the best hospitals in the world could solve this problem. The doctors could offer no hope for a cure, other than potentially keeping Molly alive long enough for new treatments to be developed. Eric and his family were of course devastated. It’s one thing to lose friends or family who are older to disease, but the prospect of losing a child is nearly unbearable. Some people give up. It can be too easy to accept what doctors predict. But for Eric and his wife, the crisis was a clarion call to dig deeper and find a way to break down the barriers to what’s possible.

“Around the time Molly got sick I started listening to a Buddhist nun, Pema Chödrön, said Eric. “She got me thinking about energy—healing energy—and energy in general. Because when you break it all down to particles, that’s all we are. Energy. And it seemed to me that was my path.” Nancy enrolled in a school of energy medicine, and soon Eric joined her to learn all they could about healing energy practices. At the same time, Nancy—an ordained pastor with a degree from the Harvard Divinity School—began tapping into her network to let people know about Molly and pray for her.

The effort started out small, but as word spread the circle grew and before long thousands of people were praying for Molly. Close family. Friends of friends. Complete strangers.

Molly underwent thirty-three rounds of proton radiation followed by metronomic chemotherapy. The goal of the chemo was simply to keep the tumor from growing. But when the follow-up scans were done, Molly’s doctors where astonished to find the tumor had actually shrunk. “They were stunned,” Eric says. “They just didn’t understand how that happened.”

Eric and Nancy, however, did understand. “You’ve seen pictures of the Sun with a gazillion rays, right?” Eric asked. “Each one of those is a way in and out of God.” A man who had walked away from God at fourteen had found a new pathway in his 70s towards deep spirituality, a foundational energy with extraordinary power. Today, Eric starts each morning with a comprehensive program of yoga, meditation, reading and prayer.

Five years after Molly’s diagnosis she has defied all expectations. The tumor has not grown. And yet challenges remain. In July of 2022, Molly came down with a pneumonia which very nearly took her life. During her month-long hospital stay, bloodwork showed that Molly had developed chemotherapy-induced acute myeloid leukemia. Once again, the family persevered. Molly received a bone marrow transplant from her mother. After more months in the hospital, Molly finally came home in the winter, living in a virtual bubble to avoid infection.

In November of 2023, happy and smiling and for all the world seeming normal and healthy, Molly went back to school.

Before Eric and I parted ways, I asked him the question I ask of all grandpas. What’s the number one thing? The essential wisdom he’d learned from his long life that he wanted his grandchildren to understand. For grandpas, this is no small matter. After all, grandpas don’t live as long as grandmas, leaving us an even briefer time window to impart vital wisdom. Many of us may never have a chance to sit down and talk with our 18-year-old grandkids. I asked, “If you picture yourself years in the future and you’re talking to Molly and your other grandkids, what would you say?”

Eric thought for a moment then said, “Trust yourself. Trust your instinct. Your life is your responsibility. It doesn’t help you or anybody to blame the way you’re feeling on somebody else.”

When I probed deeper, Eric explained that the need to trust our instincts and take responsibility is driven by his greatest fear, the thing posing an existential threat to our grandchildren. “The childhood they are going to have,” Eric explained, “is much briefer than the one you and I had. And that’s predominantly driven by the Internet. I’m scared to death of the crap that’s available on computer screens.” For Eric—and I suspect for many grandparents—it’s startling to realize that we worry more about toxic media than toxic cancer. What does this say about the direction of our modern hyper-technology-driven world?

Today, Eric spends lots of time with his grandkids, practicing mindfulness to be fully present. All of his storied ancestry and life experience is built into the fabric of his being. It’s a quilt comprised of many individual ideas and values that add up to a larger vision. It’s loving, loyal and steady. It’s sober and powerful and spiritual. There’s joy, laughter, pain. A gospel chorus that gives you chills. A map for doing the right thing. A soul that will always find ways for family to survive, and never give up trying. No matter what awaits, there’s always a lifeboat available somewhere in the starry night. You just have to pray.

Molly

Publisher’s Note: Eric’s family created this GoFundMe page to raise money to cover the high cost of Molly’s medical care.  I encourage you to share the story and the GoFundMe link so we can help Molly live a full life. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all. 

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Heirlooms of Wisdom

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When is something passed down from our ancestors more than just an antique? Can an idea be an heirloom? These questions come to mind because I’m writing this story on…

When is something passed down from our ancestors more than just an antique? Can an idea be an heirloom?

These questions come to mind because I’m writing this story on the desk that belonged to my great-grandfather. When my father inherited it, he used it as his personal desk at home in his “inner sanctum,” an office on the top floor of our house outside Boston, the place where he did his deepest thinking.

As a kid I would sometimes sit at this desk and look at the note cards dad had pinned on the wall. He’d created a compendium of wisdom gleaned from his voracious reading, one profound statement per card written in his neat all-capital lettering. The idea that stayed in my mind is a quote from George Washington Carver, the most prominent African-American scientist of the early 20th century. “Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.”

I love this desk. I love it so much it has given up its greatest secrets, which I will share with you.

This matte black 19th century antique is solid as an icebreaker, with drawers painted inside in the particular red of British phone booths. Its lines are simple and angular, unadorned by flourishes. This is a desk for work.

Its family origins date back to the Civil War. My great-great grandfather, Albert Kidder Page, served with a Massachusetts regiment. In July of 1863—the same month as the epic battle at Gettysburg—Albert was fighting his way through North Carolina when he contracted a severe case of malaria. When Albert’s father, Luke, learned that his son was extremely ill, he traveled by train from Boston to retrieve him from the army hospital and bring him home. Albert’s wife, Maria, was nine months pregnant. No doubt the family held out hope that Albert would recover and live to see his child born. But it was not to be. On July 3rd, Albert passed away in Maria’s arms. Three days later, she gave birth to their son. She named him Albert Kidder Page (curiously, he was not a ‘jr’).

Albert grew up, studied hard, and became a doctor. The desk was his.

Boston, at the time, was a destination for Chinese immigrants and Albert would accept them as patients regardless of their ability to pay. He often received china in lieu of money. I’m guessing Dr. Page was right-handed because there’s a small spot on the top right of the desk where the paint is worn away due to repeated pressure from a writing instrument — his hand filling out prescriptions for all those in need of care.

The china Dr. Page received from patients is still in the family, its value not measured in dollars.

Nearly one hundred years after the Civil War, when the desk was in my dad’s office, he flew to California to attend a scientific conference. On his trip back to Boston, on June 30th, 1956, an unknown woman approached him at the ticket counter at LAX and said, “Excuse me, I was wondering if you’re on the earlier flight. It’s urgent that I get home to my family faster and I was hoping you’d consider switching flights with me.” My dad was unfailingly kind and considerate of others, and he never seemed to be in a hurry, so it’s no surprise to me that he agreed. She took his seat on the earlier TWA flight.

That plane collided with another over the Grand Canyon. All lives were lost. It was the worse civil air disaster that had ever occurred in the United States.

My dad arrived home safely and went back to work, continuing to read voraciously and write down new nuggets of wisdom to pin on the wall, including a new one: Life is a gift. Whenever my dad told the story of the switched flights, he’d finish by saying, “And the moral of the story is, if someone asks you for a favor, do it!”

I was born three years later.

The only reason I’m here, the reason why I’ve been able to live, to raise children, to know my grandkids and to write stories on this old desk, is because of pure chance, and kindness. The gift of life that a total stranger gave my father—and by extension to me—must be somehow repaid (I did try to track down the identity of the woman who switched seats so I could contact her surviving family members, but it was not possible).

Life went on. The desk was put to good use by my dad over the following decades, with countless letters written, scientific papers perused and annotated, wisdom captured.

An underlying current of all my dad’s thinking was the need to promote world peace.

Having lived through the horrors of Okinawa, he believed all war was incredibly stupid. We could do better. The imperative for peace was infused into our family life in myriad ways, such as hosting exchange students. Building bridges of understanding with people from many countries would, in his view, create a more loving family of mankind.

This is how a young student from Kenya came to live with us in the mid-1960s. His name was James Odhiambo.

While James spent time with us five boys—expanding our world view in the process—it was really my dad that he bonded with. The full extent of that bond didn’t become fully clear until recently. A month ago, one of my brothers discovered a letter written to my father from James’ wife in 1983. In my mind’s eye, I picture dad opening the letter as he sat at this desk. Below is verbatim what she wrote:

12-10-83
Mrs. Dinah Odhiambo
P.O. Box 30101
Nairobi, Kenya

Dear Mr. Page,

It is a really long time since you read from us and also read from you. I remember, the last time was, I sent you our family photo, you never mentioned whether it reached you or not.

I thank God who has given me this chance to remember you. The [?] had come because of ups and downs, and thereafter, to give you a surprising news, I got my fifth baby. This one came after 7 years and I had not planned. God gave me a baby boy and my husband named him you, thus William-Page Odiwuor. Odiwuor means from midnight up to 3am and my baby arrived at 12:45am at night on 28-2-83. So, this means my husband together with me have not forgotten you.

I have been troubled every now and then that I have you in our family, but I have never let you know. I don’t know how you will take it but my husband insisted we must name you in our family, and I think that is why I got this one after many years.

I’m sure your wife is doing well together with the rest of the family. Please pass my warmest regards to all and may God bless you.

Sincerely,
Dinah Odhiambo

Later in the 80s we heard that James had died of AIDS.

My dad likely sat here when he wrote a check to help pay for William-Page Odiwuor’s college education. Since my dad was, like his grandfather, right-handed, the scratched paint on the desk was partly due to the tip of his pen bearing down as he wrote the check for young William, as dad did for so many other people and the causes he cared about.

So, here I am today, writing here at this old desk. It’s the nature of the publishing business that books are sold, not given away. But it’s not possible for me to write this and not think of those who wrote here before me. The prescriptions. The wisdom. The checks. Every fiber of this wood is imbued with the kindness of my ancestors and the gifts of strangers. I feel their presence as I sit here and type. To honor them, and simply to do the right thing, when my book is published a donation will be made to a non-profit that benefits children across the globe.

I’m fortunate to know the secrets of this desk, passed down to me by spoken word and a letter found by chance. Through this book, the stories will be available to my children, my grandchildren, and hopefully everyone else. Heirlooms are nice things to receive. They are even better to give.

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The Joy and Stigma of Being a Grandfather

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The level of joy that goes with being a grandpa is off the charts. But to be truly honest, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. When I first learned I…

The level of joy that goes with being a grandpa is off the charts. But to be truly honest, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

When I first learned I was going to be a grandpa, the joy I felt was intermingled with something like alarm. I was, I reminded myself, only fifty-five years old. The only grandpa I ever knew was well into his seventies, a wizened retiree and veteran of two world wars who fled Vermont winters for sunny Arizona. Suddenly I was going to be in the same club. How was that possible? I’m certainly not the only grandpa who’s felt this way. Greg Payne, who produces the Cool Grandpa podcast, has related a similar story.

Women also struggle with this major life stage milestone. Just hearing the terms ‘grandpa’ or ‘grandma’ can smash our self-image like a walking cane thrown through a plate glass window. “My mom’s hot and she didn’t want to be called Grandma,” reports Gwyneth Paltrow.  Her mother, the actress Blythe Danner, insisted on being called Woof instead. Think about that for a moment. A word associated with dogs is preferable to one that conveys grey hair.

In my case, while I didn’t relate to the elderly image of grandfatherhood, I did fully embrace my role. I told everyone about it. That included my partners at the marketing agency I co-founded and all our employees. I even shared baby pictures of my grandchild through emails and Slack. When I was in my twenties I eagerly shared baby pictures of my daughter with my co-workers at the Manhattan ad agency I worked at. Why not share photos of my grandkid to people who worked for me?

Big mistake. Or, to put it a better way, what happened next was bad. But it wasn’t my fault.

Right around the time I made my grand pronouncement to employees, the thirty-something general manager of my agency shared a memo with me and my partners about the future of the firm and things that could change. I was genuinely interested in what this bright young fellow had to say. That was until I got to the part of the memo where he stated that I was on a faster track to retirement than the other co-founder of the agency—a man virtually the same age as me.

I was indignant and angry. And I concluded—rightly, I believe—that the reason I was pegged as ready to jet off to sunny Arizona for my winters was because this employee knew I was a grandpa. Retirement is just what grandpas do, right? When I confronted my employee about this he muttered a few evasive reasons for my faster-track retirement, none of which included my being a grandpa.

Would it have helped if I’d called myself Woof?

Now that I have 4 grandchildren I have learned a few things. I’m proud of being a grandpa but generally don’t bring up the topic of grandchildren when starting out new client engagements. When I do bring up my grandkids, the response is generally “Wow, you don’t look old enough to be a grandpa!” This is complementary in a way, but also illustrates just how prevalent misconceptions are in our society. The average American becomes a grandparent at age fifty-five, so I was actually right on time. Lots of people become grandparents in their forties.

As I write this, however, it’s becoming clear that maybe I need to unlearn a few things.

I shouldn’t hide the fact that I’m a grandpa. Doing so is a surrender to the stigma associated with this amazing and rewarding stage of life. Nor should I be the least bit happy hearing that I don’t look old enough to be a grandpa. If someone becomes a grandparent—at whatever age—everyone needs to understand that what defines us has nothing to do with how old we are, or how old we may look. It’s about wisdom. Nurturing the next great generation. And yes, joy.

So, here’s an alternate, non-age-related image of a grandfather. It happens to be a shot of me taking a swim using my new wetsuit in an ice-cold lake in early May. Cold water swimming has tremendous health benefits, and it sure beats crowding into a gym. When I’m not swimming I’m running a marketing agency that helps clean energy companies grow, and I’m many years away from retirement.

This is my story. You have yours. If we share our stories with friends and co-workers, the old stereotypes will fade like photos in the sun.

You might ask, what do my grandkids call me? I’m Grandpa Ted. And I’m sticking with it.

 

The author in very, very cold Lake Willoughby, Vermont, early May 2021.

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Reunion

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Seven years ago when I found out I was going to be a grandpa I immediately sought advice on grandparenting. The prospect of being a grandpa seemed daunting. Surely there…

Seven years ago when I found out I was going to be a grandpa I immediately sought advice on grandparenting. The prospect of being a grandpa seemed daunting. Surely there were a million things for me to learn. Books to devour. Professors to consult.

But first, I spoke with my Aunt Lois.

Lois, now 95, is my late mother’s sister. In her career Lois was a much-loved music teacher as well as an accomplished cellist. During WWII she became a pilot to help ferry mail across the United States.

My Aunt Lois during the war.

Most importantly, Lois has 6 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. So I asked Lois for advice on how I could be a good grandfather.

Lois looked thoughtful for a moment, raised one hand and pronounced with gravitas, “Be there for them.”

At first I thought this was just the preamble to a speech. Nope. “Be there for them” was it, not so much a statement as a command. I have done my best to live up to this deceptively simple advice.

Being a grandpa has meant not sitting on the sidelines.

When I take the grandkids to a playground I’m there to play with them, not chill on a bench. In one of our favorite games I play the role of the “Tickle Monster.” I run around trying to catch them, and when I finally do (which requires real work given how speedy these kids are) they get tickled without mercy. Peals of laughter can be heard for miles. But like any good fisherman I release the little ones so they can be caught again.

Hanging out with the kids at home entails all kinds of activities together. Like creating castles out of couch cushions. Or reading The Lorax while snuggled up on the couch first thing in the morning as they glurp milk from sippy cups. Or Goodnight Moon at bedtime, the sound of my voice gradually lowering with the sun to lull them towards sleep and the realm of dreams.

All of this came to an abrupt end at the dawn of the pandemic.

It’s been said (notably well by the writer Paula Span in her article The Year Grandparents Lost), that the pandemic was especially hard on grandparents. Not only did the pandemic cause more deaths among older age groups, it also built a wall between the generations just when everyone needed their loved ones the most. For my wife and I, being apart from our children and grandchildren felt like being exiled to a foreign land. Some kind of Siberian gulag of the soul. Fortunately my wife has proven to be an excellent pandemic buddy despite her leaving countless balls of used Kleenex around the house strewn like wet flowers after a storm (truthfully, the list of my transgressions would require an entire story all to itself, but somehow she puts up with me).

Playground romps and bedtime books were replaced by rations of Zoom and FaceTime. It’s not that the video chats were infrequent; we were jumping on the phone multiple times every day. But too often our calls seemed like constant reminders that we could not really be there with our grandkids.

And all the while we knew they were growing up without us.

That hurt. Still, we reminded ourselves that our parents’ generation had it a lot worse; they lived through the Great Depression and a horrific world war. Surely we could manage through the masks and isolation.

Job one was simply to stay alive. In the case of my mother-in-law, Dorothy, this was unfortunately not possible. After months of near total isolation in a nursing home she succumbed to COVID, alone, in a Providence hospital in September of 2020. Her tragic death made us double down on our resolve to stay safe so we could one day all be together again. Which meant staying alone.

The surprising chorus that ushered in the spring of 2021.

I went to get my first shot of the Pfizer vaccine in March. It was in a big open space of a community center on the North Shore of Massachusetts, buzzing with nurses and volunteers and people like me. For months I’d seen the absolute misery and pain of front-line healthcare workers struggling to help COVID patients in the face of short supplies and overwhelming caseloads. But in the hall that day a different mood prevailed. The space was suffused with hope and happiness, and while I could not see the smiles under the masks of the nurses, their eyes spoke volumes. At last here was something positive and meaningful they could do.

After the quick jab I sat in the hall for the required half hour. And it was there, as I thumbed through emails and posted on Facebook, that a song welled up on the loudspeakers. It was Bill Withers singing Lean On Me. Quiet at first, then building as one by one, like a wave, the nurses, volunteers and patients started to sing along.

“Sometimes in our lives
We all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there’s always tomorrow
Lean on me
When you’re not strong
And I’ll be your friend
I’ll help you carry on
For it won’t be long
Till I’m gonna need somebody to lean on…”

Behind the big sheets of plexiglass the nurses sang and swayed to the music, this rapidly growing chorus of those who had been beat down but were now rising, together. I sang, too. It was an electric feeling, a moment I will never forget.

“Please swallow your pride
If I have things you need to borrow
For no one can fill
Those of your needs that you won’t let show…”

Within a few months, the second vaccine shot behind us, my wife and I were finally able to see our children and grandchildren again. There were many hugs and tears.

I hoisted my grand girl in the air and carried her on my shoulders…

 

…I chased my grandsons through playgrounds, the Tickle Monster alive again…

 

I met our newest grandbaby for the first time, a lovely girl born in March.

 

“Lean on me when you’re not strong
And I’ll be your friend…”

In a way, our grandchildren seemed the same (although bigger). But when my oldest grandson—now 6—grabbed a book so we could read together, it was now him proudly reading to me. The gap of time we’d lost together was suddenly palpable. This made me sad, yet I was also happy—filled with joy, actually—because despite the many challenges of the past year our family had continued to grow and persevere. Our bonds had become even stronger. And once again, with the love and support of all those around me, I can be there for them.

“I’ll help you carry on…
For it won’t be long
Till I’m gonna need somebody to lean on.”

 

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