A Grandparent's Blessed Blessings

Renewing friendships sounded like a good topic. What could I write about? I thought and thought. Then it hit me.

I called up an old friend. Actually, she had been my hairdresser, now called hairstylists from way back in the late fifties when I was single. We use to keep in touch and since she had no email or computer and I did, we stopped talking so much on the phone. Her name Virginia L. Woerner. Since I wrote this story a few years ago, she passed away two years ago. Her granddaughter was privileged to have her as her only grandmother and she was proud to be a grandmother.

The last time we had talked many years ago, she told me that she was becoming a first time grandmother at age seventy-two and a half (her words) She said she was probably the oldest first time grandmother in our area. I said better late than never and I knew she was thrilled. When Virginia and I were young and not married yet, we use to converse about young men, jobs, parents and who we would eventually marry.

I was happy for her, her daughter  got married at almost age thirty-nine and now at age forty something she was having her first child. That was a good happening for her and her mom and dad. It was a girl and Virginia was going out to buy wool and to knit some outfits for the child and a blanket. Someone once told me that if you start knitting, your married children will call you right after that and they will tell you, they are expecting.

That happened to me. I was waiting for my son and daughter-in-law to tell me they were expecting and I went to a crafts store and bought needles and wool and started that weekend to knit. However, on the day I went and bought the wool December seventh, two thousand and four; it was a rainy and ugly weather day. As I was walking out of the crafts store with my purchases, I slipped on the pavement because some shopping carts were left outside the exit-entrance area. I fell to the ground in great pain. A woman walking into the store helped me up and she said I should go to the hospital and that she was a head nurse there and she would make sure I got taken care of. Her name is Nancy Rohnacher Bowen, and then it was Nancy Rohnacher Thompson.

I did not want an ambulance and my husband drove me there about three miles and I was in great pain. The nurse met me there and she made sure I got x-rays and she stayed with me and I had dislocated my left shoulder. They put it back in and I went home in great pain. The nurse was a supervisor of several floors and she came and stayed with me the whole time, going back and forth to her work area.  It was lucky for me she was walking by. She told me she did not get to her shopping that day and she had stopped by on her way before work to the crafts store where we “met.”  Of course, her being kind to me stopped her from getting her shopping done that day too.

I was grateful for her help and I wrote a story about her in my dance magazine pages. We remained email pals for several years.

I tracked her down via the internet and I have never forgotten her kindness, her caring, and her devotion to a stranger who slipped outside a crafts store that rainy and ugly day.

Though the day was not so nice, I did meet a dear and devoted nurse who helped a stranger in need. She was and is what is called a mensch (a good soul). Now she too is a grandmother.

So through all that pain and the subsequent physical therapy that was needed to make the shoulder and arm working, I found a friend.

So here is to renewing friendships with Nancy and knowing that if a grandmother starts to knit, surely there will be a new grandbaby. It happened to my doctor and his wife. She heard that same knitting story and she started to knit and now they are expecting grandchildren number two and number three-twins. Virginia has since passed away and I was always grateful she had her lovely granddaughter in her life for ten years. This is a blessing she loved and enjoyed.

Being a grandparent is a unique event. When you first see your first grandchild, you are overwhelmed that your child had a child. As you are lucky enough to have more, you still have the same feeling.

Emily Dickinson wrote “the seasons prayed around his knees, like children round a sire: Grandfather of the days is he, of dawn the ancestor.”

This is so true and written in my words it is: when a grandchild has a grandparent and she or he loves her and or him, when he or she smiles and says “I love you Grammie or Grandpa, he or she becomes the ancestor that the child has forever. The love between a grandchild and a grandparent is endless, beautiful and one of the most “blessed blessings one can have.” I never had even one grandparent, because they were all gone when I came into this world. I appreciate to be one as a privilege given to me.

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