Nurturing the Next Great Generation

Tag: Grandfathers

What if you could only ask the Dalai Lama one thing? (I did this. He answered.)

  As I write the Good Grandpa book I’m grouping my interviews with grandpas by topic—for example, three veterans from different branches of the military—then writing a chapter focused on…

The Dalai Lama

 

As I write the Good Grandpa book I’m grouping my interviews with grandpas by topic—for example, three veterans from different branches of the military—then writing a chapter focused on what I learn.

I ask a lot of questions and always conclude with what I call the Billy Crystal City Slickers question: What’s the #1 thing that matters?

I’ve found that when I compare and contrast these #1s they form fascinating patterns, all imbued with flavors of meaning that can only be derived from their careers and life experiences.

Most recently, I met with four grandpas who are religious leaders, a priest, imam and two rabbis (one orthodox, one reform). It sounds a bit like the old joke “A priest, a rabbi and an imam walk into a bar….” But I can guarantee you that what these men told me was no joke. I was floored.

The last lap of my journey of religious wisdom discovery led me to Buddhism and a gentleman who is not actually a grandpa, at least not in a literal sense.

Lhamo Thondup was born on a straw mat in a cowshed in 1935, one of sixteen children in a humble farming family. In 1940, he was recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama and is currently the highest spiritual leader and head of Tibetan Buddhism. I wrote a letter to His Holiness in February of 2024 asking if he’d be available for a conversation. Four months later I received an email from his secretary saying the Dalai Lama, at 89, was devoting more time to rest and personal practice, and hence not available to meet. I wrote back to say that I understood and appreciated the response. However, after meeting with the four other religious leaders I felt I had given up on the Dalai Lama too easily. I wrote back and asked his secretary to ask him one question on my behalf, the #1 thing that mattered for grandchildren the world over.

The Dalai Lama replied, “Compassion is the key to the future well-being of our planet and fellow human beings.”

Excited to hear from His Holiness, I sought to better understand Buddhist teachings on compassion. Here’s how the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying defines compassion: “It is not simply a sense of sympathy or caring for the other person’s suffering, not simply a warmth of heart toward the person before you, or a sharp clarity of the recognition of their needs and pain, it is also a sustained sense and practical determination to do whatever is possible and necessary to help alleviate their suffering.”

In other words, it’s not enough to be a compassionate person, we actually have to take action to help others. There are all kinds of implications here for us as grandparents.

What comes to mind first is that after each school shooting there are the usual calls for “thoughts and prayers.” This is followed by politicians doing just about nothing. Then there’s another school shooting. And another. And another. This carnage is adding up on an almost unimaginable scale. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, childhood firearm fatalities increased by 87.1% over a 10-year period, rising to 2,590 deaths in 2021, beating out car accidents. Putting this number in perspective, a good-sized high school auditorium seats around 600 students. Imagine every single year over 4 auditoriums packed with children and teens die by gunfire.

Having genuine compassion requires us to solve this problem fast.

The question is, how? Passions run high on each side of the gun issue in America, with the NRA and other gun-rights advocates steadfastly supporting the Second Amendment, while parents and students clamor for much tighter restrictions on gun ownership. I suggest we meet in the middle on common ground. I have no doubt that all grandparents love their grandchildren. There is no red and blue color code on our national map when it comes to caring deeply about the safety of these kids. We urgently need a national conversation about what can be done to protect our grandchildren from harm, and this can’t be just one side talking. It’s going to take everybody and it has to be respectful.

One might ask, why should grandparents be the ones to make this happen? For starters, nobody else is, so why not?

Secondly, we often hear people say we’re living in a “new normal.” But those of us who are older remember a world without school shootings and we will not accept the normalization of horror. We have the time-tested experience and the moral authority required to convene this national conversation. And if any adults misbehave along the way, we’ll send them to a timeout chair.

All of the religious leaders I met with offered up their own unique perspectives, their own #1 thing. When I see their ideas in aggregate a larger picture emerges, a unifying umbrella of meaning. It’s not one pane of stained glass in a house of worship; there’s a full, rich image with light streaming through each section of color to paint a portrait I will never forget. I will be sharing this with you when the Good Grandpa book is published in 2025.
In the meantime, let’s listen to the Dalai Lama. It’s time to take action—compassionately—to stand up for the safety of all grandchildren.

4 Comments on What if you could only ask the Dalai Lama one thing? (I did this. He answered.)

The Forever Story

Once upon a time in a land far away and long ago, my dad used to make up stories for us at bedtime. All his stories involved the same seven…

Once upon a time in a land far away and long ago, my dad used to make up stories for us at bedtime.

All his stories involved the same seven characters, Casper, Jasper, and five boys named Calvin, Charlie, Nick, John and Ted — me and my four older brothers. I recall loving the stories, but that’s all I remember because they were never written down.

When my two kids where little, I took a page from my dad’s dreamtime creative playbook and made up my own stories to tell them at bedtime. My kids remember loving the stories, but that’s all they remember because I never wrote them down.

These days, coming up with stories that feature my grandkids is as wonderful for me as it is for them, and maybe I’ve finally learned my lesson because I’ve started writing them down so they’ll never be lost.

My grandkids jump into bed and implore me, “Grandpa, tell us a story!”

Then—like the grandpa in The Princess Bride—I spin a tale of magical adventures. I’ll often pause in the middle of a story to offer up different branching pathways and give the grandkids a choice of which way to go, or ask them to create and vote on the best solution for beating the dragon, crossing the fiery swamp or outwitting the ogre.

Of course, it’s inevitable that they get so excited that going to sleep is impossible. I completely fail at the ‘get the kids calmed down’ concept and I’ve taken some heat for it. I beg forgiveness. Many years from now, my grandkids will never remember that they lost a few hours of sleep, but they will remember the stories I told them and the special time we had together.

These are Forever Stories, cut from the same cloth as Forever Letters but with a creative twist.

Here’s a recent tale:

Lucinda had been playing with her Teddy Bears—Henry, Charlie, Roen and Mae—for much of the afternoon on a green spring day in the little town of Oakdale, Connecticut, when she yawned very wide and said, “Oh goodness. It must be nap time.”

Lucinda’s mom, Fern, called up from downstairs just at that moment, “Lucinda! Time for your nap!”

Lucinda gave her bears a big hug and a kiss, and set them down side by side in the playroom. “Sleep tight, my fair princes,” she said. Lucinda’s mom tucked her into bed and soon the little girl fell into a deep sleep.
But in the playroom, things were just starting to wake up.

In the dimness, a small red light blinked on and a man’s voice crackled over a radio. “Calling all Teddy Bear Rescue Squads. Calling all Teddy Bear Rescue Squads. Can you read me?”

The Bears jumped to their feet and ran to the radio. Charlie pressed the red button and whispered, “Squad one reporting! I repeat, squad one reporting! Over.”

“Roger that, squad one!” said the voice. “We need you down at the playground immediately! A tiger has gotten loose from the zoo, and if he’s not put back in his cage who knows what could happen!”

“No problem!” said Henry. “We’re on it, Chief!”

“Let’s go!” piped up Roen, a girl bear.

“Let’s go!” chimed in Mae, Roen’s little sister, who was learning how to talk and often repeated whatever her sister said.

The bears had a quick meeting, trying to keep their Teddy Bear voices down. In case you’ve never heard a Teddy Bear talk, it’s a very high pitch, almost like hearing a baby ask for crackers or something. Use your imagination.

The question now was, should they take the Rescue Squad race car, the mini-jet, or the hot air balloon?

“This is my thinking,” said Charlie, “if we take the mini-jet we might get there faster but there’s no place to land at the playground. The racecar would be pretty fast, but if we take the hot air balloon we can bring the animal cage to put the tiger in. The cage won’t fit in the car.”

“Excellent idea!” said Henry, a little too loudly, apparently, for they suddenly heard footsteps in the hall getting closer to their door.

The bears jumped back to sit exactly where Lucinda had left them and sat very still, trying to make their glass eyes look blank, so that if Fern peaked in she wouldn’t suspect that they were real live bears with a secret mission in the Teddy Bear Rescue Squad.* They heard the footsteps stop just outside the door, as if Fern had stopped to listen, but then they moved on.

“Quick!” Henry whispered.

“Yea,” Charlie whispered back, “before anyone spots us!”

“’I’ll bring some blueberries!” said Roen, who always enjoyed snacks even during emergencies.

They grabbed the hot air balloon from the closet and hung it out the window, then used the air machine to pump hot air into the balloon, which quickly grew in size. Then they attached the red and blue striped basket to the bottom of the balloon with ropes, and below that they hung the animal cage.

Within minutes they were floating above the house and over the trees as the wind blew them towards the school playground.

Charlie used the spyglass to navigate. “Left, twenty degrees!” he ordered. “Good, now down a bit – WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!” They barely missed hitting the top of a big oak tree with its branches that seemed to reach out towards them like arms.

“Look!” Henry squeaked as he peered through the spyglass, “the tiger!”

“Let me see!” Charlie said, taking hold of the spyglass. “Wow!”

Roen had her turn, too. “That’s a big tiger!” she said when she saw the yellow and black striped beast pacing next to the swing set, its tail swishing side to side.

“That’s a big tiger!” Mae said.

Mrs. Moore, one of the teachers at the school, was perched on top of the swing set clutching the metal bar for dear life, staring down at the tiger pacing hungrily below.

The Squad arrived over the playground and hovered there as they worked out a plan. How would they get the tiger into the cage to save Mrs. Moore?

“I could blast it with my stun rocket,” Henry said.

“I could make it fall asleep by shooting it with an arrow tipped with sleeping powder!” said Charlie.

“Let’s cast a magic spell!” Roen said.

Mae stomped her feet and said, “I’ll kick it in the face!”

Everyone looked at Mae, wondering when she’d learned to say something like that and how the tiger would respond if kicked in the face by Mae’s little boot with its silver sparkles and a picture of Elsa from Disney’s Frozen.

All of these ideas could work, they decided, but were a bit risky.

Roen got out her blueberries to have a snack, offering a bowl of them to the rest. They munched the sweet blueberries for a minute, thinking hard to make the right decision. Then Roen had an epiphany, which is like an idea that pops into your head, “I’ll put my blueberries into the cage so the hungry tiger will go in and eat them. Then we’ll slam the door shut!”

Mae piped in, “Then we’ll slam the door shut!”

“Yes!” Henry said, pumping the air with his furry brown fist, “That’s how Grandpa Ted catches groundhogs. If it works for groundhogs, it’ll work for a tiger!”

“But do tigers eat blueberries?” asked Charlie.

“There’s only one way to find out!” Henry said.

“Find out!” Mae said.

Roen was lowered down on a rope towards the cage, which was hanging below the hot air balloon. Being as careful as possible, she attached a bag of blueberries to one side of the cage with tape. Henry and Charlie hauled her back up and she plopped down into the air balloon’s basket. “I’ve never done THAT before,” Roen said breathlessly.

“Well done, Roen!” Charlie and Henry said.

“Well done, Roen!” Mae said.

They positioned the hot air balloon directly over the tiger and—bit-by-bit—lowered the cage down to the playground. When Mrs. Moore saw them, her eyes filled with wonder because Teddy Bears flying around in balloons is not something you see every day.

The tiger looked up and growled, “Who is this who dares disturb my snack time?”

But when the tiger saw the cage and walked towards it, he grew curious. He walked into the cage slowly, further and further, sniffing the bag holding the blueberries.

The tiger growled, “Is it meat?”

“No,” said Roen.

“Is it cheese pizza?”

“No,” said Charlie.

The tiger licked the outside of the bag, curiously. “Is it candy?”

“Much better than candy!” said Henry.

“Much better than candy!” Mae said.

This is when Roen took out her ukulele and sang her blueberry song, “Blueberry, blueberry, bluuuuuuuue…..berry!”

The tiger could not resist. With one giant chomp he bit the whole bag of blueberries right off the back of the cage and chewed, a look of heavenly satisfaction spreading across his big cat face.

Quick as a wink Charlie pulled a rope that snapped that cage shut.

Oh, the tiger did not like being trapped one bit. He roared, blueberries clinging to his huge teeth as he bit the bars of the cage in vain. Mrs. Moore, however, was delighted. She jumped down off the swing set and looked up in gratitude as the balloon—now towing the furious tiger inside the cage—rose up into the sky.

“Who, er, what are you?” she called up to them.

“We’re the TEDDY BEAR RESCUE SQUAD!” they shouted.

Henry, Charlie, Roen and Mae flew over to the zoo and lowered the cage down inside, then fast as birds they fluttered their way back home, let the air out of the balloon and crawled back through a window. It was good they did, because just after they’d sat down in the pile of other toys, Fern (who thought she’d heard something) popped her head into the room. But all she saw was four Teddy Bears sitting absolutely still.

The Zoo was grateful to have a real tiger, something they’d always wanted. They set it loose in their African savanna area so it could roam around freely.

What the zookeepers could never figure out, though, was why the tiger never wanted to eat the bowls of red meat they put in his cage.

All the tiger would eat was fresh fruit, brought in by the truckload.
Over time, the zoo bought four more tigers to add to its collection. On any given day, though, you can easily tell which of them is the tiger that terrorized Mrs. Moore in the playground. It’s the one sitting, its belly stuffed, in a pile of banana peels and bits of blueberries, apples, oranges, grapes and mangos. On Thursdays he gets a special treat of pineapples, which he eats in one gulp. He never ate meat again. Kids visiting the zoo named him Fruity the Tiger. And that, oh my best beloved, is the end of the story.

It turns out lots of grandpas make up stories for their grandkids, and one in particular— Andre Renna, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania—took the idea to a whole new level.

Andre reached out to me through my blog and we had a great conversation in Zoom-land where I learned about his family roots and his storybook grandpa creations. Andre, 70, is a retired engineer and healthcare manager who grew up in a classic Italian-American family in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

“I had the greatest childhood in the world,” Andre told me, “My cousins lived in the house with me. We’d sit on the porch and watch the Mets on TV and have some expresso and sweet pastry. I’d walk to my grandmother’s house four blocks away.”

Andre’s dad was his hero, a solid presence in his life who worked multiple jobs to make sure there was always food on the table, with Italian feasts served up by his mom.

Andre had a close relationship with both his grandfather, a bricklayer, and his grandmother. “I inherited some of my grandfather’s tools— trowels, a hammer” Andre said, “those things are precious to me.”

Andre and his wife raised their two kids in Lancaster, and today they have two grandkids. His granddaughter, Aria, arrived on the scene first, launching a wonderful new chapter in Andre’s life. “She is without a doubt the light of my life,” Andre told me, “Everyone else is a close second. I have a beard because of Aria (Papa, grow a beard!).”

Andre’s #1 wisdom he wants to share with the next generation is to never break a promise. “Your word,” he said, “is the most important thing you have.”

When Aria was 18 months old, she won a stuffed yellow duck at a seaside boardwalk arcade. Aria’s Ducky became a much-loved companion that she carried everywhere — even into her imagination.

One day when Aria was 5, Andre was pushing her on the swing. “And she says, ‘I want to have a surprise birthday party for Ducky.’ And then she disappears because I’m pushing her and she’s still talking, right? We were on the swing for forty-five minutes, and she told me this whole story…”

“Everyone will be at the party,” Aria said, “Penguin, Turtle, Unicorn….”

WHOOSH!

“Flamingo, Snakey and T-Rex and….”

WHOOSH!

“But Jasmine the cat is going to ruin the party…”

WHOOSH!

“In the end Ducky will be OK because he knows we really love him.”

When they went inside, Andre excitedly told his wife the whole story. His wife told him, “Why don’t you write it as a book?” Andre replied, “What the heck do I know about writing a children’s book?”

“Just do it!”

When Andre related this, I was reminded—based on my personal experience—that the smartest thing we can do as grandpas is to listen to our wives.

Andre immediately went to work, embarking on a remarkable collaboration with Aria to create a new children’s book, The Adventures of Aria and Ducky: The Surprise Birthday Party, featuring a little girl named Aria and her menagerie of animals.

The Surprise Birthday Party, a collaboration between Andre and his granddaughter.

 

He started by simply writing down the story Aria had shared with him; she, along with Andre’s wife and sister, offered up suggestions and corrections to polish the draft. Andre then hired a professional illustrator, David Leonard, to bring the story to life.

For Andre and Aria, the smallest details mattered.

Aria would review the working drafts and say things like, “that doesn’t look like Ducky” or “Jasmine the cat is the wrong color.” Andre was diligent about making sure that the Aria character looked just like the Aria, from facial features to blond hair. “I said to the illustrator, it has to look like her because I want to be able to say, that’s my granddaughter. And in the future I want her to be able to show this to her kids and grandkids. I drove him nuts.” It was worth it.

Andre Renna shown here with his granddaughter, Aria, and Ducky.

 

When the book launched, Andre and Aria did their own promotional push, appearing on local TV stations and doing interviews for newspapers.

While Andre has sold numerous copies of the book, he’s found a bigger audience by donating copies to pediatric hospitals.

The genesis of the book, with characters based on toys and featuring real children, will have a familiar ring to students of classic children’s literature. Winnie-the-Pooh came about when English author A. A. Milne was inspired by a stuffed bear toy that he had bought for his son Christopher Robin.

But whether or not The Adventures of Aria and Ducky ever becomes well known doesn’t ultimately matter, and the same is true for The Teddy Bear Rescue Squad.

What does matter is that these stories have a chance to become classics in the lives of our families.

I think about the magic of storytelling a lot when I ponder what our grandkids will need in order to become the greatest generation. Many young children live in a world that’s rich with imagination. The couch cushions are their castle walls, a chopstick is Harry Potter’s magic wand. But somewhere along the line—perhaps when they are lined up in rigid rows at school—their flights of fancy become more grounded, their creativity stymied by the need to pass the next test. Yet the truth is that being creative throughout their entire lives may be the ultimate test, the best thing they can bring to their own families, and indeed to employers.

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Survey found that creative thinking skills are a top priority when considering talent.

Artificial Intelligence will eat a billion jobs, but the careers of genuinely creative people will be secure for all time.

If we follow the example of Andre and Aria, and A. A. Milne, the next generation will always have their secret forest to walk in, their Hundred Acre Wood, a place where wise owls talk, where the mysterious heffalump eludes even the best trackers, and our favorite bear devours pots of delicious honey. Ducky, Casper, Jasper, Christopher Robin, Calvin, Charlie, Nick, John and Ted will also live in the forest, plus my grandkids and yours, forever and ever.

And that, oh my best beloved, is the end of the story.

Note: If you’d like a signed copy of The Adventures of Aria and Ducky, contact Andre here: awrenna@comcast.net

*Just out of curiosity I recently Googled “Teddy Bear Rescue Squad” and discovered that a woman in England is crafting outfits for a Teddy Bear Rescue Squad. Small world!

Comments Off on The Forever Story

The Profitable Lemonade Stand: Enlightened Capitalism for the Next Great Generation.

  One Christmas, a year when three of my brothers were in college, my parents were feeling especially strapped due to the simultaneous tuition payments. These days, most people would…

A lemonade stand staffed by very young entrepreneurs.

 

One Christmas, a year when three of my brothers were in college, my parents were feeling especially strapped due to the simultaneous tuition payments. These days, most people would take out college loans. Not mom and dad. We came downstairs Christmas morning to see the usual festively wrapped boxes under the tree.

When we opened the boxes, we found that each was empty except for a notecard with an IOU; mine read “IOU one Monopoly Board Game” signed, “Love, Mom & Dad.”

It turned out to be my favorite Christmas ever because I missed my older brothers and it was great to have them home for the day.

A few years after the IOU Christmas, my mom discovered that a large bag of brown rice she’d purchased a long time ago was crawling with worms. I begged her to throw it out, but she refused. “It’s perfectly good rice!” she said, handing me and my brothers tweezers to pick the wriggling worms out — a maddening task because the worms were the exact same color and size as a grain of brown rice.

My parents’ extreme frugality manifested itself throughout my childhood, including my Dad’s habit of draping used paper towels to dry in the kitchen so he could use them again later, mom making her own clothes at her Singer sewing machine, and my having to wear only hand-me-down shoes from my older brothers.

Growing up, my feet were often scrunched in shoes one or two sizes too small for me, resulting in permanent hammer toes.

All this despite the fact that my dad was a successful executive with Polaroid at a time when it was a high-flying company. We weren’t poor. We just acted that way. Having scraped by in the Great Depression, my parents saw waste as a cardinal sin and saving money as Godly in some agnostic Unitarian way. Within the mythology of Brokaw’s greatest generation, hard work and skimping pennies were valuable weapons in the arsenal of our economic battle for a better life.

Having lived like a middle-class sharecropper as a child, I swore my kids would indeed have a better life, even if I went broke making it happen.

When our daughter was in middle school, she begged us to go on a trip organized by People to People, a group founded by President Eisenhower to foster better relations with other countries. We ponied up over $3,000, which was a lot for us to spend back then. And the country Abigail visited in order to improve global relations? Australia.

My wife and I have been knuckleheads in many ways with our money (or lack thereof), but we did save on the road to retirement thanks to a recurring character in this book: my Gramp. I never inherited money from him. I did, however, take lessons from him that I’ve carried with me to the bank.

Gramp was an independent sales rep who traveled around New England selling retail displays. These were the early days of three-dimensional plastic signage that could be affixed to glass storefronts. The trunk of Gramp’s Rambler was always packed with these signs (for some reason the penguin smoking a cigarette display stuck in my mind). Gramp made decent money and saved what they could.

Once when talking with me about investing, Gramp grinned and said with a wink, “Oil stocks.”

All through the 1950s and beyond they socked money into stocks in the booming post-war energy sector. When they retired, they could afford to keep their place in Vermont and buy a nice condo in Tucson, Arizona.

Why do these stories matter? Earlier in the book I wrote about the first grandparents 30,000 years ago, the ones who began the tradition of teaching their kids and grandkids the everyday tips needed to survive and thrive. The grandparents could, for example, demonstrate the best way to plant seeds for successful crops — marking a shift towards agrarian versus nomadic communities. The wisdom imparted by these grandparents had a snowballing benefit as more and more techniques for living longer and more productive lives became broadly shared.

Thinking metaphorically, what are the seed planting tips that will help our grandkids become the greatest generation?

One area they need help with, desperately, is finance. The United States is considered a wealthy nation. Yet roughly half of Americans aged 65 and older get at least 50 percent of their family income from Social Security, and 25 percent of them get 90 percent. The Social Security Administration projects that the funds will run out by 2041.  In that year my youngest granddaughter will be 19. How and when will she ever be able to retire?

Social Security’s woes wouldn’t be such a huge problem if people saved enough to sock away money in their retirement accounts, but they don’t. The average median retirement savings in the US is a meager $87,000. Saving for retirement, of course, is only one part of the financial challenge our grandkids face. About half of Americans have no emergency savings whatsoever. Zero.

Inspired by Gramp, I bought my first stocks when I was a junior in High School and have kept at it.

My wife and I never seemed to have much left over after paying for things like the kids’ braces—not to mention my daughter’s visit to the Great Barrier Reef to repair relations with the Australians—but we put away money each year in our 401k plans and that has grown over time. Following Gramp’s independent work example, I started my first company—a housecleaning business—when I was a High School Senior. Making money cleaning toilets seemed like magic, literally turning shit into gold, and I could set my own hours. After starting out as a copywriter with an ad agency in New York City after college I founded my own marketing agency and never looked back.

And now—shazam—all these grandkids are running around. The Fundamentals of Finance classes are not taught in their schools, not even at the best high schools.

Which means it’s up the parents and grandparents to get the job done. How, I wondered, could I as a grandpa help them learn from me as I learned from Gramp, but take it up a notch. Maybe, like a second language, entrepreneurship is best learned in childhood. While I was ruminating on this idea I happened to be visiting my daughter and her boys in Connecticut one day when they decided to set up a lemonade stand. The other grandpa in my grandsons’ lives, Jack Moore, was visiting as well. Jack, 75, headed up State Street Bank’s pension fund division before retiring in 2017.

“Great idea!” said Jack. “I’ll help.”

Everyone threw in ideas for getting started. Abigail and her husband, Ryan, said they could pick up some lemonade mix and cups at Costco. The boys would draw a sign. A card table was carried up from the basement.

I said to the boys, “Make sure you write down the cost of the lemonade and cups so you can keep track of your profits.”

“What?” they said in unison through mouths full of breakfast.

“It’s not about how much lemonade you sell,” I explained, “it’s about how much money you actually make per cup of lemonade after you take your cost of goods into consideration. The money you have after you subtract your expenses for lemonade and cups will equal your profit.”

The boys stared at me, chewing, digesting this concept thoughtfully.

“Ordinarily,” I went on, “you’d have to pay someone to sell the lemonade for you. That would be your cost of labor and you’d have to subtract that from your profit, but since you’ll be selling it yourselves you don’t have to pay anyone else.”

After some initial head scratching they were all over the idea of making a profit.

When Ryan returned from Costco with the supplies, they boys examined the receipt and did the math, then we discussed how much they should charge per cup of lemonade. How much would people reasonably want to spend per cup? If they paid $1, how much would be left of each dollar after the cost of the cup and the Lemonade mix was subtracted. Doing this real-world math was really fun for them.

Jack helped them set up their stand on the street and soon, like Tom Sawyer painting the fence, they were joined by other kids up their street. They were all hopping up and down with their sign to get cars to pull over – which they did, in droves. At one point, the kids flagged down a firetruck from the local fire station. Grinning and evidently thirsty firemen hung out with the kids, and my grandsons got to try on their helmets.

 

The kids got to wear the fireman’s helmet.

 

As the afternoon wore on, the dollar bills in their bucket grew like leafy green plants in a fast-motion time lapse film. Stepping back from it all, seeing them boisterous and laughing in the sun, I saw these boys and girls growing in fast-motion, too, spouting up before my eyes. They had one foot in childhood. The other in business school. They rocked it!

We grandpas played our role that day, but the ultimate lesson came courtesy of their dad.

Ryan encouraged them to set aside a percentage of their lemonade stand profits to donate to the local fire department. They loved this idea. I loved this idea. What a fantastic lesson: pull money out of thin air, make people happy with a refreshing roadside beverage, earn a video game versus begging for it, and allocate a percentage of profits to help others.

Capitalism is by no means perfect, but at its best it is the greatest engine of prosperity. The Captains of Industry of the 19th and 20th centuries built their vast summer “cottages” in Newport, Rhode Island. Yet they also established philanthropic organizations that to this day benefit millions of people every year. Paul Newman famously allocated all of his Newman’s Own brand profits towards charity. “Give it all away!” he said.

To create large-scale positive change in their lifetimes, our grandkids need not become fabulously wealthy. They can start by simply making a decent living, regardless of the color of their skin or what town they grow up in, and along the way do the small things that matter — modest donations to their fire department or a local charity. The littlest gestures repeated by millions of young people will add up to the better world they will live in. We need to help put this power in their hands, one cup of profitable lemonade at a time.

If there is a heaven—and I strongly suspect there is—Gramp smiled and chuckled at the site of his great-grandsons jumping up and down with excitement at the lemonade stand, their whole lives ahead of them. “That’s just dandy,” he said, “wonderful!”

4 Comments on The Profitable Lemonade Stand: Enlightened Capitalism for the Next Great Generation.

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

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. 

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

From The Boys in the Boat to Head of the Charles, with Fred Schoch

On August 14, 1936, rowing crews from six countries competed for the gold medal at the Olympic games in Berlin, Germany. Adolf Hitler was in the stands, cheering on his…

On August 14, 1936, rowing crews from six countries competed for the gold medal at the Olympic games in Berlin, Germany.

Adolf Hitler was in the stands, cheering on his team along with thousands crowding the stands at the Grunau Regatta Course. There were eight rowers and one coxswain per boat on the 2000-meter race, one oar per rower, with a photo finish that became legend as the American team took home the gold. The story of the team’s journey from their humble origins in Washington state to becoming heroes is brilliantly told by Daniel James Brown in his classic book, The Boys in the Boat. A move adaptation directed by George Clooney is coming out in December 2023.

But there is another story here that’s important to tell. One that spans generations that lived before 1936, and after, and will extend into the future.

The nine American rowers in the boat that day had an extra teammate, an alternate ready to replace anyone injured or ill prior to competition. His name was Delos “Dutch” Schoch (according to family lore, at one point when Dutch was filming the team, he was standing in the way of Hitler’s view and was summarily asked to move; when I learned this it made me wish a lot more men had stood in Hitler’s way in 1936).

Fred’s dad, Dutch Schoch.

 

After serving in the navy in WWII, Dutch became head rowing Coach at Princeton. The love of rowing was passed on to Dutch’s son, Fred Schoch, who’s played a leading role in building one of the great sports competitions in the world today, the Head of the Charles Regatta held yearly in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I’m talking with lots of grandpas these days as I conduct research for my book, The Good Grandpa Project, and when I found out Fred is a grandpa, I knew I had to meet up with him over coffee.

I wanted to know how his upbringing has guided him through life, and what lessons he’s learned. And I sought to ask him the question I’m asking of all grandpas: what is the #1 piece of wisdom that will help today’s kids become the next great generation?

The following are some highlights from our conversation:

How did your upbringing shape who you’ve become?

My dad was this heroic Hemingwayesque figure. Big as I am, burly. A revered coach. He was a man of few words, but when he spoke you really paid attention. I grew up in this kind of storybook town of Princeton [New Jersey], back in the 50s. Princeton was a sleepy little town of probably 30,000 people back then. But we used to go to the basketball games and see Bill Bradley play. I think I was shaped by not only my father, but the impressive young oarsmen at Princeton. As I got bigger, I got to go on trips with them and the kids would playfully throw me up in the luggage rack of the charter bus when we went to New Haven. I started as a coxswain when I was 10 years old and even steered one of my father’s crews in the 1960 Olympic Trials in Syracuse, New York. So, I grew up around them and could be a part of the workouts. And later, when I got big enough, I started rowing with them.

What do you remember about your dad?

One of the fondest memories I have of my dad was on wintery Sunday afternoons; we had an open Willy’s jeep, and we lived on 15 acres with lots of oak trees and we burned a fire all winter in our prerevolutionary farmhouse. We’d go deep back into the woods, and we’d cut fallen trees. We didn’t have to say a lot. But I was the splitter and he was running the heavy Sears and Roebuck chainsaw. And so, I learned how to split logs and actually wrote a poem to my son, Willard, about that experience, the father/son relationship. And I gave it to him for his birthday probably 10 years ago. Your relationship with your kids is so important. I took my youngest son to the airport recently and he said, “Dad, I’m really glad you gave me a ride because it’s more than that. It’s symbolic. I want you to know how important you are and how much I want you to be in my life.” Wow.

Did you have a chance to know your grandfathers?

Both of my grandfathers died in their 50s before I was born, and my dad died of a coronary at 56. There is a big hole in my history in terms of knowing my grandparents, and I want to pass on as much as I can to my grandchildren. You begin to think about the uncertainty of our own lives when you hit 70. As the saying goes, “The lights can go out at any time.” Having time together is important. That’s why I’ve just made a commitment to retire and start consulting part time.

When you think of a creating a lasting legacy for your grandkids, what things come to mind?

I think it’s important to pass on the basic building blocks of being a good human being and being honest. A tireless work ethic was something both my parents passed on to me. As a late bloomer I had struggles, you know, but I stuck with it and came out the other side academically, and even started my career as a secondary school English teacher. It seemed like it was never going to happen, but it did. While I didn’t know my grandfathers, I’m sure they had to work hard for what they achieved. I think a sense of humility is so important in life and to respect other people. I want to make sure they’re grounded. And I think that’s something that I can pass on that I received from my father.

What lessons are there in sports for our grandkids?

Rowing has given me so much because there’s no hiding in this grueling team sport. There’s no superstars. It’s like the total teamwork demonstrated by The Boys in the Boat. I have a recent example. An aspiring rower applying to colleges told me he had achieved a certain score on an indoor rowing machine used to test fitness, and I found out later he lied to me. It’s B.S. I mean, he lied to me but he’s lying to himself. He’s afraid. I believe in redemption, but he’s going to have to turn it around. A friend of mine is a coach at Marietta College who’s a philosophy major and he talks about an analogy of a lamp; the shadow outside of the lamp shade is where you have to go as an athlete, into that pain cave. When you’re competing it can really, really hurt. You have to you be able to peer into that darkness and not be afraid to go there. You have to prepare yourself mentally to embrace the unknown. It’s true in all sports. Some people take shortcuts. And some people refuse to take shortcuts — the successful ones. It’s about loyalty to your teammates and being honest with them and yourself.

What’s the #1 thing?

In life, you’re going to have so many ups and downs. Trust who you are and that you’re going to figure it out. It’s going to be okay. Just be resilient and keep marching forward. In grad school, I kept a piece of paper taped to my bulletin board with a saying from the German poet Goethe that read “work and despair not.” That pithy aphorism kept me going many late nights. I hope my grandchildren will absorb some of my wisdom and benefit from my experience.

My thoughts on Fred’s story: It brings to mind the idea that all of us are living history. From one generation to the next there is a bond that outlasts time, with evergreen lessons we can build on and shape into our own, and give again. And sometimes it’s the really simple things, like cutting wood in a forest—without talking—that says how much we love our children.

What are activities that you do with your grandkids that they will remember? Please post your comments to join the conversation. 

Comments Off on From The Boys in the Boat to Head of the Charles, with Fred Schoch

A Beacon Across Time. The story of a grandpa, his son and grandsons visiting the lighthouse run by their ancestor.

In 1837 Nathaniel Gamage, Jr. became the second keeper of the Pemaquid Lighthouse in New Harbor, Maine. He and other lighthouse keepers up and down the New England coast were…

In 1837 Nathaniel Gamage, Jr. became the second keeper of the Pemaquid Lighthouse in New Harbor, Maine.

He and other lighthouse keepers up and down the New England coast were called “wickies,” named after the whale-oil soaked wicks of the lanterns they were tasked with trimming and keeping alight to alert ships nearing the rocky shore.

On a hot sunny September day 186 years later, a new group of travelers came to the lighthouse: my wife and I, along with Jack and Kalley Moore, their son Ryan (our son in law), and the two grandsons we have in common — Henry and Charlie. Jack, Ryan and the boys are all direct descendants of Nathaniel Gamage.

This was more than a typical tourist visit. It was more like a homecoming.

To say that the Pemaquid Lighthouse is iconic doesn’t do it justice. It sits atop a rise of granite high above the ocean, and on the day of our visit the white of the majestic tower was matched by the whitecaps of the waves stretching out across the horizon. Henry and Charlie scrambled over the rocks and darted around the throngs of visitors lining up to ascend up the lighthouse.

While we waited our turn in line, Jack let the State Park ranger know about the Moore family’s ancestral tie to the lighthouse. The lanky ranger was in his 60s, a retired cop with a thick Maine accent. As soon as he heard that not one but THREE generations of Gamage descendants were visiting his whole face lit up. Other people in line heard the news as well and we all joined in a lively conversation, with the park ranger sharing history and chatting with Henry and Charlie.

I brought the boys through the house attached to the lighthouse, now a museum. They were thrilled to see the artifacts on display, including the name of their great, great, great, great (at least this many greats) grandfather listed on a plaque.

Soon it was our turn to go up into the lighthouse. The stairs were narrow and steep, and we grandpas and grandmas ascended cautiously while the boys were eager to sprint.

There was just enough room at the top for our extended family. I think it’s fair to say we all felt a sense of wonder being there. The view was of course breathtaking, looking out through the glass to a panoramic and classic view of the Maine coastline.

In the center was the light, surrounded by our family. The brilliant sunshine hit the curved Fresnel glass lens and refracted around us.

We were there in the present, yet with a sense that the lighthouse itself was a beacon that shone across the years to the time of grandpa Gamage. I wondered what Nathaniel would have said if someone had told him that someday this visit would happen, that his future family would stop by in a few hundred years, with these amazing kids a testament to his legacy.

While I am not related to grandpa Gamage, he and I have the very best things in common: Henry and Charlie, and the joy of passing on a little bit of who we are to the next generations to come. For me, this was a shining, shimmering revelation.

After we’d very carefully descended the winding stairs, Ryan and the boys went down to the shore to walk and play along the rocks by the crashing waves. I could see them in the distance silhouetted against the water as the boys held up discovered shells for dad to see, or jumped from rock to rock, while seagulls swooped and soared above.

Grandpa Jack

 

Grandson Henry. See the resemblance?

3 Comments on A Beacon Across Time. The story of a grandpa, his son and grandsons visiting the lighthouse run by their ancestor.

The Nearly Indescribable Joy and Sadness of Seeing Them Grow Up

Peter Pan protested that he would not grow up. In the island of Neverland, he and Wendy could live a never-ending adventure filled with pirates, fairies and crocodiles, and they…

Peter Pan protested that he would not grow up. In the island of Neverland, he and Wendy could live a never-ending adventure filled with pirates, fairies and crocodiles, and they could fly.

As a grandfather, I’ve rediscovered my inner boy, that eternal Peter Pan that never really left me but was hidden from my vision for a while. I become Peter again when I’m building a cave out of couch cushions with my grandkids. Venomous snakes hunt across the jungle floor (the living room) in search of prey. A pterodactyl (me) swoops down and darkens the sky, talons reaching towards the mouth of the cave as the helpless little ones scream with laughter.

Childhood is indeed a magical place, but as parents and grandparents we know all too well that it doesn’t last forever.

When I was very little, I remember my dad would hold me up and rub my face against the stubble of his early morning beard, the sandpaper-like feel of it making me giggle. Then one day when I was older, he picked me up and was about to do what he’d always done, but I stopped him and said, “I don’t like that anymore.” He looked very sad. At the time I didn’t understand why.

But I do now.

As a grandpa, I’m experiencing time with a sense of increasing acceleration.

My eldest grandson is now 9, and the time between when I held that baby boy and the long-limbed seemingly pre-teen he is today, the one who is able to tackle me to the floor quite effectively, passed in the blink of a crocodile’s eye. And with this rapid passage of time I’ve become more aware than ever of the little changes I see in my grandkids, the moments I see them emerging from Neverland, sometimes in small steps, other times in giant leaps.

There’s great joy in seeing them progress upward in life (and all of them very tall, like me). Yet I feel an almost indescribable sadness when I see them leaving their own childhoods behind. A sadness that the magic I have witnessed—and rediscovered—is fleeting.

It’s one thing to experience this as a parent. As a grandpa, the emotions are all the more poignant because I know this is my last rodeo.

Each step that I see them take into adulthood has an air of personal finality for me because I know I will only see this once. And may not live long enough to see them have children of their own. This is it.

I recently had one of these joy/sadness moments on a Sunday morning. My son came over with his two girls to hang out and eat too many bagels, one of our favorite weekend activities.

Like most grandparents, my wife I read a lot to our grandkids. Whether it’s Goodnight Moon, or searching once again for the elusive rainbow elephant, we’re always reaching for another book. No matter what’s going on, or which grandchild is with us, we’ll ask if they’d like to read a book, and another, and another.

On this particular Sunday, I was in the living room with our youngest granddaughter, not yet 2 years old. She’s a very bright girl, cute and always fearlessly active (rock walls? Yes!) and highly focused on building Magna-Tile structures or whatever toy is before her. I was sitting in my leather chair, enjoying watching her bustle about. The sun was shining through multiple windows, filling the room with a bright, warm feeling. She was snapping Legos together, quietly figuring out what pieces would fit.

Then she looked up at me with her big brown eyes, picked up a book and held it toward me, and asked, “Would you like to read a book?”

I was startled. This very young girl, still in diapers and barely beyond infancy, had just formed a complete sentence, and the look on her face was suddenly so grown-up, so girl versus baby, that the joy/sadness of the moment struck me with full force. The part of me that was in the room then, fully present with my granddaughter, replied, “Yes, I would love to read a book.”

The other part of me, this boy inside who never, ever wanted to grow up, was flying with Wendy hand in hand through the night sky, the wind in my hair, heading home.

Second star to the right and straight on ’til morning.

My wife, Nancy, reading to our grand girls.

6 Comments on The Nearly Indescribable Joy and Sadness of Seeing Them Grow Up

Babysitting the grandsons. Is this my best job ever?

When my kids were little, it seemed like my wife and I were constantly and frantically juggling daycare and illness. There’s no pleasant way to put this, but let’s just…

When my kids were little, it seemed like my wife and I were constantly and frantically juggling daycare and illness.

There’s no pleasant way to put this, but let’s just say there was a lot of vomit involved. This was of course in the 1980s, when the concept of “remote work” was a euphemism for simply not working. So we got very good at making bargains with each other.

“If you stay home him with him today, I’ll stay home tomorrow.”

Or….

“If you stay home with her, you can sleep late on Saturday.”

Flash forward to this year when our daughter, the mother of our two grandsons (8 and 6), called to let us know her nanny had given two weeks’ notice.

Our daughter had interviews lined up with a few nanny options, but nobody great had taken the position yet. A few weeks after that, with no nanny on board, we grandparents kicked into gear to help.

First, my son-in-law’s parents stayed with them for a week, dropping the kids off for the morning school bus, picking them up in the afternoon, taking them to lessons, sports practices, and on and on.

Then it was our turn. My wife and I packed up our laptops and headed off, picking up where the other grandparents had left off, kind of like a marathon race with senior citizens running and passing off the baton, except the baton was lunch boxes and backpacks or the bag for swim practice or soccer shin guards or, wait, there was something else, oh forget it the school bus is coming!

In short, the mad dash of our child rearing years comes back full bore, quickly morphing out of memory to a very present and urgent reality.

And here’s the thing: I loved every minute of it. One day one our youngest grandson couldn’t go to school because of a lingering cough. I let me clients know I was going to be in meetings all day and not available for calls. This was true, but I omitted the fact that my meetings were with my grandson.

We visited a graveyard nearby my daughter’s house and played the game of finding the oldest date etched in stone.

Then we went for a long walk by the ocean on a treelined road, the fall leaves showing red and yellow and orange, the sun bright.

I took him to Shake Shack for lunch and we kept talking over hotdogs and burgers.

 

When we got back to the house, my grandson wrote with invisible ink in his diary, played with dinosaurs, and watched My Little Pony.

Out of all the packed days I’ve had at work over the past 30 years, this was one of my most productive and enjoyable. I’m confident that if I live to be 99, chances are I won’t look back on that day and wish I’d spent it making more money.

It turns out there’s evidence that babysitting grandchildren, at least periodically babysitting them versus full time, has been shown to help grandparents live longer. The researchers don’t know why that’s the case, but the data backs it up.

I have my own theory and it’s pretty simple: Helping our kids with the grandkids renews our sense of purpose.

We like knowing that we’re needed and loved. Just as important, being with our grandkids—even if they have hacking coughs—is a recipe for joy. And joy is a very healthy thing, not just for us grandparents but for everyone.

The next day, my grandson was feeling much better and went off to school with his older brother. My wife and I waved to them as the school bus drove off, then we want back to our other jobs.

Comments Off on Babysitting the grandsons. Is this my best job ever?

Dear 26-Year-Old Us

Last week my wife was cleaning out an old cabinet and came across a photo taken of us on our honeymoon in London in 1985. I’d always liked this picture…

Last week my wife was cleaning out an old cabinet and came across a photo taken of us on our honeymoon in London in 1985. I’d always liked this picture and thought it had been lost, so seeing it again was a bit like finding ourselves the way we were back then. But not so long ago, really, in terms of years.

The span of time is more accurately measured in the changes we’ve been through; raising two children and all the blurred rush that entailed; and most recently, the addition of 4 gregarious and beautiful grandchildren. It wasn’t always easy getting to the present. This made me wish I could reach out to the two of us as we were at 26 and offer some sage advice.

So, here is my letter to the younger us:

Dear Ted and Nancy…

First off, I’d have to say the two of you look great. Nancy, the combination of the long wavy hair and lovely features makes you stunning. Ted, I know that you are insecure about your looks and have never felt 100% comfortable in your skin. Stop worrying.

I want you both to know that you are just at the very beginning of an amazing journey together. It’s going to happen very quickly. Nancy, you may already be pregnant, and a little girl named Abigail will join us in 9 months. And within three years we will have a son, Nicholas, who will complete the picture.

Your early years as a family will sometimes be rocky to say the least.

There will a lot of juggling of work and daycare, which will be made harder by the fact that both your kids will be sick A LOT. Not life-threatening sick, but one cold or stomach bug after the other. You will argue about which of you will stay home to care for the kids when they have a fever. You will strike bargains with each other (like, I’ll stay home today if you let me sleep late on Saturday). You will work it out time and again, and the kids will grow up to be well-balanced and charming people.

When times are tough, and when they are great, try to pause and take stock of where you are and the extraordinary gifts before you. All of it will go by so fast that when you’re older you’ll shake your head in wonder.

I’d love to go back to one of those bad days and give you a hug.

I’d tell you that it’s all going to be ok. That’s not some platitude; it’s the truth.

I wish I could help you pause time once in a while. After you’ve read to the kids in bed and they at last fall asleep, don’t rush out of the room. Take a moment to look at your slumbering Abigail and Nicholas. Experience deeply the sense of peace. Listen to the sound of their breath. Realize that these seconds are incredibly precious and transitory. Someday—despite all the vomit you have to clean up on a regular basis, the tears to soothe, and all the other troubles—you will wish you could be right back here in this moment.

Here’s some advice about your relationship.

It would be nice if you had more regular dates. Find a sitter and go out to dinner at least twice a month. You don’t have to go to a gourmet restaurant. Maybe just have coffee. Take a few minutes to talk. You’ll be the best possible parents if you nurture your relationship to the fullest.

When the kids leave for college and you are alone in your newly empty nest, it’s ok to feel very sad.

Go ahead and bawl your eyes out. So much of your purpose has been centered on raising your girl and boy. The fact that they are now grown up and strong is a sign you did a great job.

This may shock you, but it actually won’t be very long before your kids have kids. Honestly, it will feel like you blinked and suddenly there will be a bunch of grandchildren to hug and read to and make cookies with.The empty nest will be full again before you know it.

Lastly, I’d suggest you extend your honeymoon by at least a few weeks.

Drive not only through the British midlands and Wales, but also to Scotland. Go to the northernmost castle on the coast and feel the wind in your hair (especially you, Ted, because you’re going to lose it by your 40s). A wonderfully rich and busy life with children and grandchildren is before you, but there’s no need to rush ahead. Not today. Slow down and enjoy the view, and each other.

5 Comments on Dear 26-Year-Old Us

The Mouse Autopsy: How Grandparents Can Nurture the Next Great Generation.

What do we learn from our grandfathers and how do we learn it? This question has been on my mind a lot lately. While my four grandchildren swirl and dash…

What do we learn from our grandfathers and how do we learn it? This question has been on my mind a lot lately. While my four grandchildren swirl and dash around me on these warm summer days by the lake, I know these times together are fleeting. What will I remember of this when I’m older, and what will they remember as adults?

While remembering and sharing stories has become easier thanks to the Internet, it’s still a challenge to create genuinely memorable and wisdom-rich experiences. This is something I’m working on (I know I have a lot to learn). My dad, however, was a born master at creating unforgettable experiences that helped shape my children to become the wonderful people they are today.

I invite you to come back with me to a summer day in 1999.

My wife and I were up at my parents’ house in Northern Vermont with our son and daughter. The house, which dad designed, has 9-foot tall windows overlooking the mountains. Nature is everywhere – and there is a lot of it. This neck of the woods is chock full of every variety of critter, and quite a few of them make it their business to get into the house.

Mice were the bane of my mother’s existence. Mom was a big, tall woman who loved watching Julia Child and cooking up feasts for me and my four older brothers. The sheer volume of food cooked and consumed in the house probably attracted the mice to have their own boisterous family gatherings. Mouse traps and poison were the preferred methods of extermination, yet neither worked well enough to rid the place of scurrying vermin. So when a mouse did meet its end, mom was jubilant. “Got one!” she’d exclaim.

On the day of this story, mom had sent two mice to meet their maker. “Got two!” she said, pointing with two fingers.

My dad, an MIT-educated chemical engineer, had a lifelong fascination with science. At the urging of one of his professors he learned the habit of always asking ‘why?’ So much so that when I was growing up, the word WHY! (always all caps with exclamation point) was taped to every mirror in the house.

Well, dad wanted to know why the two mice had died, but instead of asking mom he enlisted my children to conduct a science experiment. Dad explained to my wide-eyed offspring (13 and 10) that they would perform an autopsy on the mice to ascertain the cause of death. Necks broken in a trap? Poison? Something else?

Dad brought the kids out to the driveway, our de facto laboratory.

There, before my astonished and delighted children, dad stapled the mice to a big board, arms and legs splayed out and belly up. He handed my kids scalpels and told them where to cut. I looked on from a distance, chuckling and shaking my head. In hindsight the scene was like some kind of CSI Vermont episode.

In short order, both mouse stomachs were revealed to be chock full of little pink pellets of mouse poison. This was a real ‘aha’ moment for my kids. While it was just two mice, the forensic process was truly scientific in nature. My kids learned that being curious is the first vital step in discovery. In time, and with enough effort, all the secrets of the world could be revealed.

The lesson stuck.

Many years later, when my daughter spoke at my dad’s memorial service, she credited the mouse autopsy as a key experience that sparked her interest in science, and ultimately inspired her to get her Masters (speech pathology). Every child she teaches is living a more rewarding and capable life because of my daughter’s scientific viewpoint, the demand to ask WHY!, the insatiable hunger to know.

What are experiences you had with your grandparents that stuck with you, and why? What experiences are you creating now? Please share your ideas here so we can learn from each other.

My dad, William (Bill) Page, and the word he sought to teach his children and grandchildren.

Comments Off on The Mouse Autopsy: How Grandparents Can Nurture the Next Great Generation.

Type on the field below and hit Enter/Return to search