After Grandma, What Then?

My dad's mother, Grandma Hattie Pulford Hahn, was a country woman but well educated for her day. That is, she had long passages of the Bible memorized, including the whole Sermon on the Mount. She was my Sunday School teacher in the town's Methodist church and before marriage she'd been a one-room country school teacher. She had thirteen grandchildren but I felt I was a favorite of hers. Perhaps each of us thought the same. I have tons of memories about her and I love her to this day. Her second son, Reuben Jordan Hahn, was my father.

Grandmother Maude Turner Darling was my city grandma. She had a business of her own long before I came along. It was a milliner's shop. By the time I knew this grandmother well she'd had four beautiful children all grown up, but only my two younger brothers and me for grandchildren. We were the offspring of her youngest, my mother, Faith Caroline Darling Hahn.

After graduation from high school I took my first train ride to Riverside, California from Minneapolis, Minnesota. There I was to live with Grandmother Darling and attend the Riverside Junior College located just a short walk from her small adobe cottage. By then both my mother and my country grandma had passed on. Daddy got married to the mother of a schoolmate of mine who had lost his father and the new stepmother was a good fit to take over where I'd left off. This phase of my life presented a comfortable interlude of nearly two years between high school and marriage.

Living with Grandmother Darling gave me a path away from country boyfriends and the likely role of a Minnesota wife and mother. Grandmother bought me a piano and paid for private piano lessons with an excellent teacher. She watched me do her proud with good grades in college where the professors called me "Miss Hahn." I knew the moral boundaries that were expected of me and was glad to obey them, even though these were hinted more than spoken. A "nice girl" just guarded her reputation and self respect. Grandmother Darling paved the way to my marriage to a young Marine captain who was a fighter pilot as well as the product of a family who had lived next door to her in Minneapolis. At nineteen I was married to Wallace Ginder Wethe in the Flyers' Chapel at The Mission Inn in Riverside, California. It was a small and beautiful ceremony.

So, there it is in a nutshell. What prompted this blog? Only this: Grandmothers of the world should be shining examples to their grandchildren. They can't be perfect, but they can show unconditional love and hope in ways that can't offend. No one wants to be exactly like grandma, but good grandmas show us how to be the best of ourselves. Here are a few grandmother rules: Don't preach; just be. Don't criticize; just wait for the seed to grow. Crudely expressed advice I once heard was not too wrong: "A good grandmother keeps her purse open and her mouth shut."I would add, be a grandmother that believes God is always there for His children whether they know it or not. Prayers by grandmothers work.

If you have a loving grandmother count yourself blessed. If you don't, then I pity you, but you can do this: Pretend you have an ideal grandmother. Maybe you can improve on the one or ones you have by being an ideal grandchild. Much of our world is make-believe anyway, so make believe the best of Grandma and Grandpa too. Make believe the best of your parents and even everyone, but most of all make the best of yourself, not in make-believe but for real! A good Grandmother would show you how.