We have had our youngest grandchild here with us this weekend and it got me to thinking about my own grandmothers now that I am one myself.

My dad had an accident while training a horse when I was in the first grade and the horse fell on him and broke his back. From first grade until he died when I was 18 he rarely had a day free from pain and was in the hospital a lot and had two major back operations.

Because my dad was sick a lot of the time us three kids spent a tremendous lot of time with our two grandmothers.

My dad’s mother was a real worker and probably one of the best cooks around. She was the matriarch of the family and lived on a farm and rose early in the morning before daylight and began the work of the day and the preparing of the meals for the farm hands. I learned my work ethic from her. She taught me so many things.

I used to love to sit on her front porch with the two entrance doors and help her break beans or just sit in that wonderful porch swing that she had and have conversation with her.

After my grandpa died she would come around ever so often and stay with us for a week at a time and that time with her was glorious. She never did learn to drive or have a driver’s license so we always had to pick her up and check on her and take her places. I loved spending time with her.

My other grandma, my Mom’s mother taught me just as many things but in different ways. She was a horrible cook and when we went to her house she had a cupboard full of food items that were instant like potato sticks in a can, Tang instant breakfast drink, and popcorn that popped on the stove in an aluminum pie pan and foil that rose in the air as the popcorn popped. And oh, the Campbell’s soup cans in that cupboard! Every kind of soup you could think of!

This grandma always had a little black stool that she would put over in the bathtub before bed and we would have to sit on it and wash our feet. We played hard at her house and I can only imagine the dirt that was on our bodies in different places but to her the feet was all that mattered. We also slept upstairs there and even though she had indoor plumbing we were told to use the slop jar while upstairs. Chamber pot to some would be the word. This grandma was very unique and she drove a car and loved to run around and visit and oh she could talk. She was a talker for sure!

This maternal grandmother of mine taught us all three how important that prayer was. She had made these little knee cushions and had one for each one of us and for herself too and each night that we stayed there she would get out those cushions before bed and place them on the floor by her big bed and we would all kneel down beside of her and say our goodnight prayers.

This grandma was also an encourager. I found a card recently in my family Bible that she had sent me when I was a young mother and in the card she had told me what a fine job me and my husband were doing.

Some people live far away from their grandchildren and sometimes that is just how it is but I am very thankful that I can be close and involved in my grandchildren’s lives just like my grandmas were in mine.

I remember one time when my Dad had his very first back operation in Nashville and my Mom stayed down there with him and they were gone for three months. My dad’s mother moved in with my Mom’s mother and the two grandmas took care of us the whole time. My dad’s two brothers also went to our farm every single day and fed the livestock, gathered the eggs, and milked the cow. As they returned home they would stop at grandma’s house and leave the milk and eggs there for us kids to have.

I had an uncle James too, my Mom’s brother that lived with my grandmother on my Mom’s side. He was born a blue baby and also had polio as a small child so he never married and was crippled for life and lived there with my maternal grandmother. My paternal grandmother was such a good cook that when she lived there for the three months my Uncle James cried when she left because he had never tasted such good food.

Last night I wrote about how older folk have so much to offer the younger generation and I know my two grandmas both influenced my life…..probably more than my parents did. Just about everything I am today I owe to both of them.

If you are a grandma or grandpa, I salute you and oh what a mission field you have with those grandchildren. You do not have to serve in a foreign land because you are needed so much here at home.

Little things my grandmas did or said are just fried in my brain. Hardly a day goes by that I do not think of one or both of them or something they taught me or said to me.

Psalm 71:17-18 NKJV

O God, You have taught me from my youth; And to this day I declare Your wondrous works. Now also when I am old and gray headed, O God, do not forsake me, Until I declare Your strength to this generation, Your power to everyone who is to come.