Nurturing the Next Great Generation

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Letters from Saba — Time Capsules of Wisdom for Our Grandchildren

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Author’s note: As I write the Good Grandpa book, slated for publication in 2025 by Regalo Press, I’m sharing parts of the chapters on my blog. This post tells the…

Author’s note: As I write the Good Grandpa book, slated for publication in 2025 by Regalo Press, I’m sharing parts of the chapters on my blog. This post tells the story of Forever Letters and the power to share our love and wisdom with future generations.

In the early 12th century, Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon, a translator and physician living in Southern France, picked up his pen to write a letter. He was likely an old man at the time, wise and perhaps frail, fully aware of the limited amount of sand remaining in his life’s hourglass. His words were not meant to be read by friends or business associates. It was a letter to be read in the future by his children and grandchildren:

“Avoid bad society, make thy books thy companions, let thy bookcases and shelves be thy gardens and pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. If thy soul be satiate and weary, change from garden to garden, from furrow to furrow, from sight to sight. Then will thy desire renew itself, and thy soul be satisfied with delight.”

Judah’s letter was a form of ethical will, an ancient Jewish tradition with roots in the Bible. The practice of passing on accrued wisdom to nurture future generations, these written time-capsules, became more broadly used through the Middle Ages and in time was adopted by people of all faiths, continuing into our modern era.

Here, I must pause to ask my father’s favorite question: Why?

I’ve seen the answer written on the faces of the many grandpas I’ve recently interviewed. Not one single man I’ve spoken with (all of them Boomers like me), ever had a chance to know one of their grandpas. The actuarial tables show why this is the case. An American man born in 1900 had an average life expectancy of about 47 years.12 By the time their children had children most of them were no longer on the scene. An ethical will, often referred to as a Forever Letter, is an insurance policy against the loss of the precious ideas and values we pray our grandchildren will learn from us. We yearn for the chance to guide our grandchildren and leave a lasting legacy.

The history of the Forever Letter was brought home to me by a grandpa who has become a friend, Bob Halperin.

Bob reached out to me after reading my blog, and we met up at the local Grandpa Networking Center (Starbucks), and for subsequent fast hikes through ice-covered nature trails. Bob, I quickly learned, is a fascinating guy. He earned his undergraduate degree in economics from Brandeis, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and went on to lead a range of learning-focused organizations, notably serving as Director of the MIT Sloan Executive Education program. Today, Bob runs his own consulting practice that provides support groups for senior executives.

Bob and I have different educational backgrounds (his is better), but have the same haircut (bald), and share an interest in family stories. Bob, 68, speaks animatedly to convey ideas that spark out of his prodigious mind like intellectual popcorn. He’s also a writer, and a good one. While he didn’t know his grandfathers, one of them — Morris Jacobsohn—nevertheless left a big impression on him. “In 1950,” Bob said, “he wrote a letter to my oldest cousin, David, and I got to read it when I was 12.” Bob shared the letter with me. It begins…

I am addressing this letter to you. Being the oldest, the first of our grandchildren, you will reach maturity and fuller understanding before all your cousins. My request: please impart the contents of this letter to them, as they reach the age of full understanding.

Morris went on to describe his early childhood growing up impoverished in Palestine before it was Israel, his learning Hebrew at the age of three and a half, and studying the Talmud at age six. Morris poured his soul into sharing a structure for how his grandchildren could and should live:

In this outline, I hope to impart to you my personal code for living. I consider this code, not merely my ethical foundation, but the very cause of my humble attainments in life.

His lifelong love of scripture featured prominently in the formation of his personal code…

Studying the Bible in the original Hebrew I was trained to reach a broader understanding of “How and Why” of human actions and progress.

Morris finishes with words that spoke to Bob as if he were in the same room with him, because, in a way, he was:

One wishes to be remembered well. And in the hope that you will all so remember me, I conclude this letter with my final wishes; may you all share good opportunities and good fortune all through your lives.

Inspired by his grandfather’s example, Bob started writing letters to his two daughters when they were young, each letter designed to share his love and wisdom to mark a milestone in their lives such as graduating from high school or having their first child. When Bob’s first grandchild was born, he set up a special Gmail address from grandpa Bob. As of today, he’s written about forty letters to his three grandchildren, letters from Saba (Hebrew for grandfather). “They’re written in an adult way for them to read when they’re older,” Bob said, “and I’ve told my daughters ‘here’s the email address, here’s the password. I could die at any time, but they’re there.’”

Bob shared some of the letters with me, starting with this introduction…

This is the first of what I hope will be many emails I will send to you over the coming months and years! It may be many years before you can fully understand all of my messages. I will leave it to your parents to decide how and when to share with you.

And an email with a playful lesson on gratitude…

One small way that I try to remember to be grateful for even the smallest things I have is by saying what orthodox Jews call Asher Yatzar (or informally the “Peeing Prayer”).

Plus other emails addressing some of life’s most profound challenges….

The reality of life is that you will be blessed to have people in your life that you love and respect, and can’t imagine living without. And then through accident or illness, they will be taken away from you. I cannot shield you from these hard realities, but I can offer some perspective, having lived through my own losses.

I found Bob’s letters to be incredibly charming, thoughtful, loving and smart. How cool is it that a tradition that dates back to Biblical times is now in email form? While Saba’s letters were written to his grandchildren, they also spoke to me. The more I thought about Letters from Saba, the more I thought of my own family and our legacy.

I remembered a letter that my dad had written to my four older brothers a few years before I was born.

The first time I read it I was in my early twenties, when my dad was still with us, and I recall thinking it was lovely, but not life-altering. After talking with Bob I tracked down the letter and when I read it again—as a 64 year old grandpa—it resonated profoundly. My dad passed away in 2011 and reading this brought him back to me, vividly. But I also had to live longer to more fully appreciate the depth and beauty of his wisdom. Here is the letter.

July 2, 1956

To my Children:

When you get old enough to understand this letter fully, you will be as old as I am but I hope you will keep it, Calvin, so that you and the others may read it later on. Dear Calvin, Charles, Bill Jr. and John: There are times when I wished I knew what my father thought. It wasn’t that I wanted to lean on him for advice but it’s just that I always felt that he was a man that I would have liked to have known better. I expect to be around a long time after you have grown up but I want to talk to you now.

I’ve just finished flying across the country — to San Francisco and then to Los Angeles and Denver where I bought your mother an Aspenwood pin and some gold nuggets for you fellas — and then back to Boston. I know that you will all take this air trip some day and when you do, I know you will feel as I did that it is a tremendous and fascinating experience — where the grandeur of these United States perceived in a brief span of hours brings the meaning of unity home — unity of the land and the people and the weather and the soil. Nature shouts out to you, “This is what I am.” And our people say, “Fine, this is what you are. Here is what I can do to change you — to make you do something for me and my fellow Americans. Nature, I have the most powerful tool in the world – it’s the cooperation I get from my fellow citizens. They are my partners and if your soil grows plants and your mountains give minerals and if your waters carry boats and generate power and quench people’s thirst, it is because they are partners.”

I looked down, near sunset, on the tiny town of Delta surrounded by the vast desert of Utah. Off on the edge of town on a hill was a Mormon church. The people of the town had planted the hill with green grass and connected up lights on the lawn to illuminate the outside of the church. And with the sands of the desert mixing with the grass at the bottom of the hill, one of the greatest symbols of man’s unity shown brightly and gloriously in the dusk.

One of the things that will impress you when you fly across the country is the progress that people have made and the potential for the progress that has yet to come. You are all going to take part in that progress and your contributions to that progress will influence the lives of each of your other fellow Americans. Here is the challenge that comes with being born a United States citizen. You have more tools at your disposal here than anywhere in the world, — more knowledge, more education, more cooperating and effective people to work with, and a more responsive and better loved governmental system than the citizens of any other country in the world.

The challenge to each of you is all the greater because you have these things with which to work. What are some of the things that challenge you Calvin and you Charles and you Bill and you John. When you read this letter later on, you will be able to state them as well as I.
1. The successful completion of a world community where the same cooperative spirit that exists across the United States exists throughout the world.
2. The elimination of disease.
3. The pushing back of boundaries of scientific knowledge, both in the physical and the social fields, and the application of that knowledge for the good of everybody who breathes oxygen and those yet to breathe it (your children).

You will come to know that the greatest contribution that each of you shall make to this progress shall come by using your minds — by thinking. The greatest contributions to human welfare are not made by those who serve the people, but by those who determine how to serve. One of the most important contributors to the progress of the United States had this to say, “The man who doesn’t make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasure in life. He not only misses the greatest pleasure but he cannot make the most of himself. All progress, all success, springs from thinking.” That was Thomas Edison.

When you grow older, read. Read Edison’s biography, his own notes, Ernest Dimnet’s “The Art of Thinking,” Osborn’s “Applied Imagination,” Leonardo DaVinci’s “Notebooks,” Newton’s “Principia,” Abraham Lincoln’s letters, Bertrand Russell’s “A History of Western Philosophy.” Read what you love to read. Great men will speak to you. You can get their thoughts for the price of a book.

Calvin and Charles and Bill and John, feel deeply the value and the purpose of the thing you are striving to create. Question, question, question! What is it good for? Who will benefit? How? When? Where? Why?

Each of you will come to feel that you have a great task before you. Be a fighter. Choose your weapons carefully and fight. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter. And remember, that the most powerful weapon in the world is clear thought.

With all my love to you boys,

Dad

What immediately struck me after reading this was my dad’s heartfelt portrayal of America. I could barely recognize his positive 1956 vision of our country versus the toxic divisive mess we live in today. How and why has America come to this juncture, and what can we do about it? How can our grandkids have any hope of becoming the next great generation if our country lacks a hopeful unifying vision for the future?

It wasn’t until Bob shared with me his #1 wisdom that an answer, a sliver of light, began to gleam in my darkness.

Bob smiled and said, “Rabbi Hillel was asked to summarize the Torah standing on one foot and what he says is some version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do onto you; the rest is commentary. Now, go study! So, my first answer to your question is, try to be a good listener. Because if you can be a good listener, the rest is commentary, right? If you can be a good listener, everything else is possible.”

When I read my dad’s letter—and the letters from Bob’s Saba—with this in mind, it bought home to me that conveying wisdom in our ethical wills is only the beginning. What matters is actually listening to the amazing things that are written, and then taking action. I had read my dad’s guidance to think and read, I had seen the list of books he told us to read, but I’d never read them.

Last week I went to the library and took out Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy and Leonardo DaVinici’s Notebooks and I’m devouring them like a man who’s been starving in the wilderness.

I’m listening to Bob’s Saba’s advice, too, and will finally read the Bible (the whole thing versus the bits I read in Sunday School). And I’m saying the Peeing Prayer on a regular basis!

I’ve started conversations with my children about what it means to be American, and we are planning a family trip with all the grandkids to visit the Statue of Liberty. I want them to know that America can still be a beacon of hope to the world — if we get our act together. I’ll tell them that I have traveled to many countries, and they are great countries, but to this day I would still choose to live in the U.S., despite its many flaws, because we are the only country that has a dream — the American dream. Anything is possible here. Anything. But to Bob’s point, the full range of what’s possible depends on our ability to listen to each other.

We may not agree with the political views of others, but that doesn’t make them bad people.

We can find pleasure—and ultimately common ground—through thoughtful conversations and intelligent dissent, versus bloodthirsty cage matches on Facebook and cable news. In his letter to his grandsons Saba Morris wrote it better than I can: “Broad-mindedness, as against being fanatic or addicted to habits and ideas, leads on to the correct fashioning of one’s own life. Tolerance and patience, as added virtues, help to prevent much of bitterness and suffering, from disappointments and frictions with society and surroundings.”

The writing of letters meant to be read by future generations has one additional and critically important value. Simply writing down our thoughts helps to crystalize them today. For me, this entire book is a letter to my grandchildren, all the richer thanks to the wonderful ideas other Sabas have shared with me. If indeed the most powerful weapon in the world is clear thought, I hope the collective wisdom here will prove in time to be an arsenal that unleashes extraordinary potential. Question, question, question! If the answers don’t come to us right away, we’ll keep trying and never give up. We’ll fight like hell, because this dream is worth it.

 

Bob Halperin hiking in New Hampshire with his growing family. July 2022.

 

Author’s note: I’m grateful to Bob Halperin for reaching out to me and sharing his story. If you’re a grandpa who’s writing letters to your grandkids, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Wisdom is the best kind of heirloom. 

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

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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. 

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A Tale of Two Pilots (and the Generational Value of Longevity).

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It was an early morning in July 1918, cloudy with a strong wind blowing as the American pilot flew his Nieuport 28 biplane over Chamery, a hamlet of Coulonges-en-Tardenois not…

It was an early morning in July 1918, cloudy with a strong wind blowing as the American pilot flew his Nieuport 28 biplane over Chamery, a hamlet of Coulonges-en-Tardenois not far from the front lines. His mission:  Scout out and shoot down German reconnaissance. The fields of France were lush and green below, expanding out to the horizon where a glimmer of sun shone through the clouds, with dark trenches coiled through the fields like venomous snakes.

The roar of the planes behind him was his first sign of trouble.

He turned with alarm to see three Fokker Chasse planes bearing down on him from above. He yanked the stick hard to maneuver and climb into a more favorable fighting position, hearing the rattling bursts of machine gun fire growing nearer. It was too late. Within seconds, he was shot twice in the back of the head. His plane turned over on its back and plunged to Earth.

Back home on Long Island, the young man’s father—former President Theodore Roosevelt—mourned deeply from afar. Roosevelt put on a brave face for the press, but many believed he was so heartbroken he never recovered, and died barely a year after his favorite son, Quentin.

In the same French skies that year was another American pilot, Lieutenant Frederick L. Fish. The son of a Vermont State Supreme Court justice, Fred was tall, with short-cut sandy brown hair, a long face with an aquiline nose and clear grey-blue eyes. As he flew, Fred looked down at the battle below, a muddy moonscape of devastation, trenches separated by undulating piles and pits from shell blasts, shattered tree trunks pointing at twisted angles.

Fred pulled the trigger. But instead of firing a machine gun, he was snapping the shutter of a camera mounted to his plane, photographing enemy positions to provide intelligence to army headquarters. Fred was smart. Resourceful. Brave. Lucky as hell.

Fred was also my grandfather.

After the war, Fred Fish became a successful salesman, and in middle age became a Colonel in the Air Force in WWII to help organize allied resources for the D-Day landings.

I got to know Gramp very well, thankfully, when I was a teenager working for him to help manage and clean his rental cottages on our family farm along the shores of Lake Willoughby in Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom. The five-mile-long lake was formed when a glacier bore down from the North, cutting a deep trough in the land and splitting one big mountain in two—Mt. Pisgah and Mt. Hor—with steep rock cliffs that slope down to the deep lake waters. The family’s rental cottages, all painted red with white trim, lined a sandy beach and hugged the banks of a brook that flowed from Westmore mountain.

Even then, in the 1970s, Gramp had a commanding presence.

Though bent with age, he was still tall at six foot two, and was quite comfortable giving orders and seeing that they were obeyed without question. He was usually dressed head to toe in khaki, including a cap, and would fix me with his clear eyes and tell me to do this (empty buckets of sewage out of a septic well) or that (rake the beach). Or the Sisyphean task of cleaning the cottages in-between rentals using an upright vacuum that had terrible suction. “You missed a spot!”

I can picture him now vividly as he kicked back at the end of a long day, drinking a Miller High Life in the yard behind the Farmhouse. “Teddy,” he’d say, “there’s no substitute for hard work.”

Gramp lived into his mid-eighties, always active and full of life. He sang hymns in Church, delighting everyone with his vibrant baritone voice. Often down at the beach he’d break into yet another chorus of his favorite song, The Foggy Foggy Dew.

Why does the fact that Gramp survived two wars and lived a long life matter? Why did it matter to him, and—for the purposes of this story—why did it matter to me, my brothers and cousins? Just as important, why did his very nature as a grandfather matter to us, complete with his many tales of adventure and shared wisdom?

It turns out it matters a lot. Not just in the case of my Gramp, but for all grandpas and our loved ones here in America and around the world. The reasons are rooted in the history of humanity itself.

Early humans lived lives that Thomas Hobbes best described as “Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Fossil records indicate that our very earliest ancestors 30,000 years ago lived to about the age of 30. Which meant very few lived long enough to become grandparents. Scientists aren’t sure why Upper Paleolithic Europeans started to live longer into relatively old age, but they surmise that the changes brought about by this longevity had a profound impact on evolution.

When more grandparents came on the scene, things started to change for the better.

“Grandparents,” an article in Scientific American informs us, “contribute economic and social resources to their descendants, increasing both the number of offspring their children can have and the survivorship of their grandchildren.” In other words, having grandpa and grandma hanging out in the cave meant they were there to help raise the kids and dole out essential knowledge. Grandparents could teach, from experience, how to plant seeds to get the best crops. Or a thousand other things that helped the family survive and thrive.

Gramp’s habit of telling stories ladled with wisdom is likely a key reason why several of my four older brothers survived into adulthood.

Here’s one story out of many that shows how Gramp made a difference.

It was Easter, 1969, a lovely spring day in Lexington, Massachusetts, when my family—mom, dad and brothers—loaded into the station wagon and headed over to my grandparents’ house across town for the traditional late afternoon feast of ham, potatoes, peas, pies and handfuls of chocolate Easter eggs.

I was 10 at the time, while my eldest brother, Calvin, was twenty-one, and Charlie, nineteen. Both draft age for Vietnam. Photos taken that day seem inked in pastel hues, all of us in jackets and ties, young and pink-faced.

The war was not far away. Every night we watched Walter Cronkite on the evening news and there was always a tally of the men who had died in Vietnam. My parents were very much against the war and were not shy about saying so. Dad was no stranger to war, having been divebombed by kamikazes at the battle of Okinawa. He often said war was the stupidest thing he’d ever seen, and Vietnam only confirmed his beliefs. He did his part to serve his country but suffered lifelong PTSD. I once witnessed my mom give him food in a red dish, and when he saw the color red he clenched his teeth and screamed, “Blood!”

Having seen dad’s post-war stress up close, Calvin and Charlie were nervous about the draft; there was a lot of nail biting going on.

Calvin was still a bit on the fence, though, about whether he’d go to Vietnam if his draft number came up. He’d been in ROTC and was better prepared than most of his peers to fight. Both my parents hated Richard Nixon. My Gramp and Gram, however, were lifelong Republicans through and through. Even if Nixon wasn’t perfect, they would always support whoever led the Grand Old Party.

After we’d gorged ourselves on Gram’s multi-course dinner, we retired to the living room. Somehow the topic of Vietnam came up. My grandparents never said a word about Vietnam, which is why what Gramp said that day was so astonishing.

Gramp held court in his chair, center stage, while we young men sat nearby in respectful silence. “Well, boys,” Gramp said, “when I went to war the first time, in World War I, they told us it was the war to end all wars. Then came World War II don’t you know, and we had to go back and fight another one. Then there was Korea. And now there’s Vietnam.”

Here Gramp gestured one long hand in the air for emphasis, “All I can tell you is, it’s always the old men who start wars, and it’s the young men who are sent off to fight them.”

None of us said a word in response, but heads nodded. We knew exactly what Gramp’s opinion of Vietnam was without him ever having to be explicit or betray his Republican principles. None of my brothers chose to fight in Vietnam.

Only a man who’d flown above the trenches in France, then returned to Europe to fight again not too long after, and only a man who loved his grandsons more than anything, had the moral credence, love and wisdom required to tell us what he did. My brothers and I lived on to have children and grandchildren of our own.

What are lessons that I and other grandparents can impart to help nourish the next great generation? What role does wisdom play in survival and happiness?

In future posts, I’ll offer up some ideas. Not only mine, but gems of wisdom I’ve heard from other grandparents. If you have suggestions or would like to write a guest post, drop me a line at teddypage@gmail.com.

Gramp in WWI

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Grandparenting Advice from the Boat Lady

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In the process of hunting for ways to navigate grandfatherhood, I sought out the advice of my oldest living relative, Aunt Lois, my late mother’s sister. Lois was 95 at…

In the process of hunting for ways to navigate grandfatherhood, I sought out the advice of my oldest living relative, Aunt Lois, my late mother’s sister.

Lois was 95 at the time, frail but sharp as a tack. In her long career Lois was a much-loved music teacher and an accomplished cellist. During WWII she became a pilot to help ferry mail across the United States.

Lois delivering mail in WWII

 

Like my mom, Lois had a sharp, acerbic wit. She and my mom would go for daily dunks in Lake Willoughby wearing matching bathing caps festooned with brightly colored rubber flowers. They’d chat while treading water.

The other thing Lois and my mom had in common was a deep love for their grandchildren. The grandpas I knew loved their grandkids just as much as the grandmas, but it was the grandmas who actually said so. Grandpas showed their love in other ways, like telling stories or simply working with us.

Lois had 6 grandchildren and, thanks to her longevity, lived to enjoy her 5 great-grandchildren as well. Surely, I thought, Lois could speak volumes about how I could be a good grandpa.

I caught up with Lois one day down at the Willoughby beach after her daily dunk, years after my mom had passed. Lois at 95 was like a dry vine that had been bundled into a ball, arms and legs spindly, jaggy fingers twisted in odd directions by arthritis. She could walk with a cane or with a loved one holding her arm, guiding her ship to dock with a thunk into the nearest chair. On the day I quizzed her, she was bundled in a sweater in the late August cool. She wore fabulous pink Jackie Onassis-style big-framed sunglasses.

“Lois, any advice on how I can be a good grandpa?” I asked.

Lois looked thoughtful for a moment, staring out at the lake and the waves swooshing onto the shore. Then she raised one bony finger and pronounced, “Be there for them.”

I waited for her to continue. I figured her statement was merely a preamble to a longer, more eloquent oration. But no, that was it. And the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right. If she had spoken for a whole day, or a year, she could not have imparted better advice. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address was a brief 272 words, yet positively verbose by Lois’ standards. Great ideas are a lot like acorns. All the DNA of the tree is there and highly compact. When planted and nourished, the acorn thrives into a massive multi-branched oak tree.

In the case of what Lois had told me, that tree had sprawling branches that hugged and protected all those she loved most.

Lois lived those words. Even up until the last year of her long life, when any movement at all caused her pain, she’d be there for us and her many grand and great grandchildren in myriad ways. Every year on the 4th of July, Lois was the “boat lady” for our annual celebrations at the beach. Around dusk the wind would die down and leave the lake flat as a mirror, and in its reflection the wild roses of dusk bloomed as the sun slowly set. We’d light the bonfire as the whole family gathered around, talking and laughing, and Lois would sit at the picnic table and teach the bustling kids how to fold newspapers into paper boats.

Just as the sun was leaving the sky and the stars began to peek out, adults helped the kids put a match to their boats and launch them onto the water; the shimmering flames of a dozen ships floated slowly out onto the lake, the kids cheering theirs on; the winner would be the last boat still burning.

In her younger days, Lois would stand on the dock and play taps on her bugle. At 95, she sat in her chair and sang along with us around the bonfire, withered with time but still a young mother inside.

Last year Lois passed away quietly in bed. The night before she died, she excitedly told my cousins that she had a busy day ahead of her. She was going to see Ray (her late husband), her sister, mother and father. There was so much to look forward to.

This summer and for all summers to come, the paper boats will still flame and glitter along the shores of the lake at dusk. There’s some of Lois in every fold of those boats, and in every squeal of excitement as the kids set their boats aflame and watch them float and sputter.

It makes me very happy to know that Lois provided me with the best possible advice, and to realize—through my discussions with dozens of grandparents—that there are as many ways to be there for grandkids as there are leaves in a forest.

In my own grandpa life, I’ve found that being there for them can be a chance to teach lessons that will last a lifetime.

I’ve fine-tuned the art of the pillow fight by applying just the right amount of power to each swing of the pillow; enough to score a definitive cushy punch yet still harmless.

There are also opportunities for learning.  On a recent weekend morning, my grandkids decided to make a lemonade stand and make enough money to help pay for a video game (their elusive Holy Grail). When they brought it up, I said, “Ok, that’s a great idea. But you should also take into account your cost of goods so you can determine how much profit you’ll make per cup of lemonade sold.”

Their reply: “What?”

This led to a robust discussion, complete with a math exercise, that delved into the cost of the lemonade mix and plastic cups, how much they would charge per cup, and how much they’d ultimately make in profit after subtracting their cost of goods. Over the course of a day they raked in a sizable amount of money at a decent profit.

The lemonade stand, staffed by future entrepreneurs.

My son-in-law added a wonderful touch: half the proceeds will be donated to the local fire department.

From my grandkids’ perspective, this was all magic. It felt to them like pulling money out of thin air. Instead of begging their parents to buy them a video game, they showed entrepreneurial spirit and took control of their finances. And they’re not even 10 years old yet.

Being there for the grandkids helps shape them into who they can become in the future, the best version of themselves. They might be making paper boats today, and building real boats in adulthood, or founding a new beverage company. And hopefully giving a percentage of their profits to charity. What a wonderful life lesson for them. And a total blast for us.

When I talk about nurturing the next great generation, this is what I mean. If we can help raise a generation of young people who know how to found and run profitable businesses—and give proceeds to charitable causes—we can change the world.

But let’s not forget the pillow fights. My grandkids are getting bigger by the week and our battles are becoming truly epic. I will show no mercy.

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STORIES

Wrinkles. The Maps of Life.

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As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed more and more people who’ve “had work done” on their faces. I genuinely hate the results of most plastic surgery; many people look like…

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed more and more people who’ve “had work done” on their faces.

I genuinely hate the results of most plastic surgery; many people look like they’ve stuck their head out the window of a speeding car, the wind pushing back their skin into a perpetual grimace. They don’t look younger at all. I would pay a surgeon to NOT look like that, and the fact that so many people fork over thousands in a desperate attempt to recapture their youth is sad.

My sixty-three-year-old wife is beautiful, wrinkles and all. I have wrinkles, too. We earned them.

All those times we juggled work and daycare for the kids? There are facial lines for that.

The time my son came down with meningitis and I rushed him to the hospital for tests? It took a doctor and two nurses to hold him down while they inserted a needle into his spine to extract fluid for testing. He screamed. Afterwards, they gave him a drug to erase his memory of the experience, but there was no such drug given to me. I picked up a few wrinkles that day.

When my eldest grandson was having trouble breathing due to a bad case of RSV, the lines on my face deepened.

We prayed for him to get better, and he did. I’m keeping the resulting wrinkles to remind myself, every time I look in the mirror, that prayer matters.

I’ve had surgery on my thyroid, left foot, and several hernias. The stitches healed, but the stress added a lot more lines.

There have been many good times as well, now etched on our faces. Like all the days in the sun at Willoughby Lake in Vermont swimming with our grandkids. I can trace the lines around my mouth formed by smiling (and yes, sun damage. I should have put on more sunscreen).

Our faces are a map of our lives, each line a bend in the road marked by joy or sadness. We own them and nobody will take them away, least of all a surgeon paid to stretch them into oblivion.

Call me sentimental or old fashioned. You can even call me just plain old. There’s no point trying to be something I’m not.

In fact, I find it liberating to accept my age and all that comes with it. And the money I’m saving from avoiding plastic surgery? I’m going to buy a swing set for the grandkids.

That said, I’m not in a position to judge others, no matter what extent they go to update their faces.

Madonna recently took a lot of heat for her extensive surgery. She’s an amazing legend and what she did was her personal decision. More power to her. There are also many people who have minor work done, like the occasional Botox treatment. There is no right or wrong here.

All I’m trying to say is that the wrinkles that come with time should be accepted and even celebrated.   What do you think?

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Babysitting the grandsons. Is this my best job ever?

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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.

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BUCKET O' WISDOM

Fostering the Best Future for our Daughters & Granddaughters

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In Walter Isaacson’s wonderful book, The Code Breaker, he describes the life and work of Jennifer Doudna, a scientist credited with the creation of CRISPR gene editing technology. If you…

In Walter Isaacson’s wonderful book, The Code Breaker, he describes the life and work of Jennifer Doudna, a scientist credited with the creation of CRISPR gene editing technology.

If you or a loved one benefited from the COVID vaccine developed at astonishing speed, you can thank Jennifer. CRISPR allowed scientists to rapidly edit the RNA used in the vaccine, and millions of lives were saved in the process.

What really struck me about Doudna’s story, however, was how this Nobel-winning scientist was strongly discouraged from pursuing a career in science. Her high school guidance counselor advised her that “science is for men.” Fortunately for Doudna—and all of us—she didn’t listen.

As a grandfather I think of Doudna when I see my daughter and granddaughters. As grandparents, how can we help them live in a world where nobody, ever, under any circumstances, tries to confine them within boundaries fabricated by men?

I grew up in a traditional male dominated household.

My dad, a chemical engineer and executive with Polaroid, walked in the door at 6:30 pm every weeknight with the expectation that mom would have dinner on the table for all the males: my dad, me and four older brothers. And she did. These days people would say she was a “stay at home mom.” In the 1960s that’s just the way it was.

To my mom, having four sons in a row was a blessing and a curse. She loved us all but really longed to have at least one girl in the family mix. Just one daughter to make dresses for, or perhaps commiserate with about the male-run world. After giving birth to my older brothers mom tried one last time to have a girl, but then I was born and those hopes were dashed. She gave up and bought a girl Labrador Retriever puppy and tied a pink ribbon around its neck. Her name was Holly (apparently this would have been my name if I’d been a girl). To get the full story of Holly and the puppies she would eventually give birth to, you can read my book, The Willoughby Chronicles.

You might wonder, how did a busy exec like my dad commuting home in heavy traffic from Cambridge, Massachusetts, manage to walk in exactly at 6:30 each night?

Because he always stopped at the library, then left there at 6:25 to get to our house on time for dinner. He could have arrived some days at 6 or earlier and helped out, but somehow that thought didn’t enter his mind.

My mom was a smart, creative woman. Her frustration with her lot grew as the 70s and the womens’ rights movement progressed. I often heard her say, wistfully, that she could have done something with her life. In truth, raising five of us—each one gigantic and constantly ravenous—was certainly the most demanding job in the Page household. There was no leisurely stopping off at the library for mom. The vats of baked ziti needed to be cooked for the boys. Or a million other thankless tasks completed.

She did stage some occasional token protests, like the time she complained that my dad didn’t always eat the food she had carefully prepared. “That really hurts my feelings,” she said.

Dad apologized and swore in the future he’d always eat her meals. A few days later she served him a sandwich made with cat food (Kal Kan, no less, a slimy odiferous mush). I’m not entirely sure he realized he was eating cat food. It’s possible. In any case he downed the whole sandwich and thanked her for it.

The present and future I want for my daughter and grand girls is one where all career choices are open, all pay is equal, and no high school guidance counselor will ever seek to enforce limits. If women choose to pursue lives where they are raising kids full time, then that direction must be fully respected as well. “Stay at home mom” should never be a pejorative expression.

So, how can we foster the best possible future? Perhaps it starts with how we play with the kids, because the path towards being something starts with imagining it.

We can have bright plastic kitchen play sets with dishes that both the girls and boys can play with. But have a bright plastic science lab right beside it. During playtime, we could ask a boy or girl if they want to make some pasta for dinner. And we can ask if they’d like to edit genes to invent a new vaccine to save humanity. Let them choose their play, just as they choose the future they will inhabit.

Jennifer Doudna was born with many gifts. She’s brilliant, but also lucky to have a forceful personality that helped her push back against her guidance counselor. Not every kid will have this. We have to work harder, wherever we can, to make career and life paths fully accessible to all.

What are ways you can think of to help our kids help their kids, the next great generation, become who they were meant to be? Post a comment to join the conversation.

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STORIES

Rediscovering Halloween

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When our two kids were little and we first took them out trick or treating, I recall sensing the ghosts of my own childhood Halloween memories bubbling up in the…

When our two kids were little and we first took them out trick or treating, I recall sensing the ghosts of my own childhood Halloween memories bubbling up in the witches’ cauldron of my mind. Carving pumpkins into grinning, candle-gleaming jack-o-lanterns. Navigating through spooky garlands of cobwebs to a neighbors door, shouts of “trick or treat!” and of course the pillow cases full of candy. But when our two kids grew up and went off to college, the magic of Halloween left as well.

At best we’d have a bowl of candy at the ready for the few kids who trekked to our far end of the street, or—when even less enthused—we’d leave the bowl on the steps. Sad!

That has changed.

Our four grandchildren have brought about the great rediscovering of Halloween. Like little bats swooping through the night, our grandchildren have dived into Halloween with total glee and brought us along for the ride.

This Halloween we tagged along with my son’s family. One granddaughter, age 3, was a bee, the 7-month-old a ladybug, and my son a beekeeper (complete with professional beekeeper’s hat and long leather gloves). For the bee, this was her first real Halloween experience, old enough to fully appreciate the three-headed Cerberus of costumes, candy and ghoulish decorations.

The night was cold but not freezing, and dark as only late October nights can feel after the brightness of summer has faded and knowing that winter is fast approaching.

Apparitions of fairies, Samurai warriors, vampires and Frankenstein monsters—and one parent in full Elvis Presley tight white leather with sequins garb repeating “Thank you very much”—appeared out of the dark, briefly illuminated by jittery flashlights.

Our grand girl bee buzzed up the steps of a house, apparently not scared by the bloody head of a monster in a bowl of Reese’s peanut butter cups, or a life-sized ghost wafting beneath a maple tree. We carried our youngest grand girl, our ladybug, who snuggled close and stared at all this with a look of wonder; she was at a loss for words, only partly because she didn’t know any yet.

After an hour the bee’s candy bag was filling up with M&Ms, Mars Bars, Three Musketeers, Charleston Chews, gummy bears, you name it. When I was a kid, I ate these treats by the bucket. As a grandpa, I avoided them. Devouring candy was not part of the diet plan and I imagined my yoga and swimming workouts of the previous week evaporating in a cloud of white sugar.

And then a curious thing happened.

We walked up to one of the last spooky houses we saw that evening, the bee rang the bell and shouted “trick or treat!” and a mom held out a basket of candy.

But not just any candy. They were Snickers. I took one.

Later that night, with unhurried deliberation, I unwrapped the fun-sized Snickers and ate it. This was no ordinary Snickers. Its caramel peanut chocolaty goodness was the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten in my entire life. All my past Halloweens and the entire vast volume of candy I consumed as a child were condensed into that one little Snickers bar. In that moment, I grew bee wings of my own and rose off the ground, hovering, before slowly and with some reluctance returning to earth.

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STORIES

Thoughts on Life and Mortality While Seeing Double at Walden Pond

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I first experienced double vision in 2019 during an intensely stressful period at work around the holidays. I had a weird virus of some kind (back when the term virus…

I first experienced double vision in 2019 during an intensely stressful period at work around the holidays.

I had a weird virus of some kind (back when the term virus had far tamer connotations than today), and my entire body broke out in a horrible itchy rash. Days later, while driving, I saw with alarm that the sidewalk on the right side of the road was now at an angle across the middle of the road. An eye specialist soon found the culprit: the 6th cranial nerve behind my left eye had gone on vacation, perhaps because of the virus. This particular nerve is in charge of the lateral movement of the eye, so while I had—and still have—two perfectly healthy eyes, they don’t look in the same direction. My primary doctor emailed nonchalantly, “We rarely know what causes it, and it usually goes away.”

He was right. While I was deeply alarmed that my vision had gone to hell, within about three months I was fully back to normal. I thought all that was behind me.

I was wrong.

On a sunny September day a few weeks ago I started seeing double again. The angle of the roadway was all off, and with the Picasso-like modernism of my multiple vision came a sudden torrent of sheer panic. I put on my reading glasses and looked at my computer screen, and there, too, was double vision. Doing my work as a writer was doubly hard if not impossible. Worst of all, the bizarre vision made me dizzy and nauseous.

My eye doctor confirmed that my 6th cranial nerve was not working properly. And this time I am being referred to a neurologist. In the absence of high blood pressure or diabetes, both of which can cause sudden vision changes, I did not fit the profile of those with double vision.

Doctors are by nature wary of telling patients all the things that can actually be wrong.

They don’t want us to freak out. That’s what the Internet is for. The WebMD site indicates that the 6th cranial nerve can have problems due to things like a brain tumor, stroke, or MS. Of course, the site also explained, it usually goes away within a few months. The neurologist will no doubt have me get a brain scan to check for these things.

And in the meantime, life goes on. I see my body as a ship carrying me through time and space. At any given moment there might be one or more things wrong (a sore tendon in my foot, for example). Like Scotty on Star Trek, I’m dispatched to fix the problem, and I’m usually pleased to report back—in a Scottish brogue—that it won’t be easy but it will get done. It has to.

So the repairs keep happening while I’m hurtling at warp speed through life, working with clients, spending time with my wife and (most important for both of us) being with our four grandchildren.

Fear stalks anyone who hears the word “brain tumor.” But, I’ve told myself, this is what we all sign up for when we are born.

Our little newborn baby hands are too small to hold the pen on the contract that must be initialed as soon as we emerge from the womb, but the contract is binding nevertheless. It states unequivocally that we must accept with grace the good and the bad, the joy and the pain, the love and heartache.

I have a friend who lost a young son to a brain tumor. It was and is horribly sad. He was far too young to be taken from this world. I, on the other hand, am 62. If my number is up (and to be clear, I don’t believe it is), I can have no complaints. How many men get to enjoy being with not just one, but four grandchildren? As my dad used to say, “This is all grace.” There is no alternative to keeping calm and carrying on.

And so it was that within days of meeting with the eye specialist I found myself at fabled Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts.

I started a regimen back in the spring that entailed mile-long swims four or five days a week. Thanks to swimming and dietary changes I have lost twenty-five pounds since June, and I wasn’t about to stop for anything.

The air was cool—about 60 degrees—the leafy trees along the water’s edge were just beginning to turn red, yellow and orange. I took off the glasses I use that blocks the vision of my left eye so I can see straight with my right eye, and put on my swimming goggles.

Goggles themselves are rarely clear, so putting them on and seeing the familiar blur of the water-splotched plastic lenses was calming, like a visual white noise that partly obscured the reality of my double vision. I jumped forward into the cold water and swam hard and fast, thrusting my arms forward and back, the shock of the cold gradually easing as the exercise warmed me and the waters washed over and around and under me, propelled forward with the knowledge of my potential doom chasing behind, or perhaps it was simply the joy of being in my element again, doing something regular and healthy in defiance of my dysfunctional cranial nerve and the fear of the insidious brain tumor strangling it unseen inside by skull.

My hands pounded in the water, pulling back again and again until I needed a rest, and there in the center of the one-mile long pond I switched from the crawl stroke to the less strenuous sidestroke. Doing the sidestroke, you float on your side, one eye in the water, the other above, coordinating arms reaching and pulling while scissoring the legs.

On my side, the edge of the pond came into starker view.

A painting of fall leaves seen laterally, with the blue sky above and the dark pond below. And with my cranial nerve on sabbatical, the scene was repeated one over the other.

Henry David Thoreau famously spent a year camped beside the pond when writing his seminal work, Walden. As he once wrote in his journal, “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

There in my double pond on that day, I saw my life.

Not a “life flashing before your eyes” vision but more of a meditation on this whole experience. I think if Thoreau were alive today he’d be one of the people on the beach with his iPhone turned off, or better yet left in the car. When we are really alone with our uninterrupted thoughts we see more clearly. The noise of everyday life is a distraction. Seeing a double shoreline, I knew then, was weird but ok at the same time. I told God that if this is what he wanted me to experience, I was “all in.” I would see both shores and their myriad fall colors. Because accepting whatever comes and letting it flow through my body and mind like the cool waters around me was a way to acknowledge that the pain and anxiety and beauty were inseparable and inevitable.

It’s the contrast between the dark sadness and vivid, beautiful happiness that makes all the good things in life so much better.

Intermingled with my prayer, I saw a memory (captured in my mind like a perfect photo) of my two grandsons, age 7 and 5, running across the beach at our place in Vermont. In the background was the deep blue lake and evergreen mountains, and the boys were looking up excitedly at the sky because an eagle was there not more than fifty yards overhead flying north, and they shouted “the eagle!”

In that memory was the awareness that life is just as finite as this second. The perfect alignment of eagle, grandsons, a glorious summer day. Here, now.

Chances are, the neurologist will find nothing alarming in my brain scan. My 6th cranial nerve will tire of its extended vacation and come back to work with renewed vigor. My perfect vision will return. Or it might return for the most part but I’ll need to wear glasses like most people.

But no matter what happens, I hope I can learn from Mr. Thoreau. I’ll keep swimming right up until the pond freezes over (I have a wetsuit, after all). And if I learn very well, then I will know that it’s not about what I look at that matters, but what I really and truly see.

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STORIES

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

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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.

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