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Overview
Stories Grandparents Tell About Their Grandchildren is a touching and humorous collection of anecdotes and memories from grandparents about their grandchildren. From the pranks and charm of small tots to the adventures and achievements of older grandchildren, these stories are sure to strike a familiar chord in anyone who is -- or has -- a grandparent. Both personal and universal, this collection is about real life and the challenges and wonders of the world we live in. Most of all, there are no unhappy endings: grandparents know all about persevering and overcorming, and the common thread throughout their stories is their affirmation of life.
Stories Grandparents Tell About Their Grandchildren is a perfect read for every matriarch and patriarch in your family, and for the people who love them.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780062030986 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Publication date: | 12/28/2010 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Sales rank: | 916,127 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Bill Adler is the editor of four New York Times bestselling books, including The Kennedy Wit, and is also the president of Bill Adler Books, Inc., a New York literary agency whose clients have included Mike Wallace, Dan Rather, President George W. Bush, Bob Dole, Larry King, and Nancy Reagan.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
How Cute They Are
Babies and toddlers can be adorable, but it is when children begin to talk that things start getting really interesting. As youngsters begin to explore the world and try out new words to describe it, their attempts to understand the innumerable mysteries that surround them can be endearing, surprising, and often very funny. They can also be embarrassing. The parents of young children can sometimes find their kids more exasperating than amusing, but the same out-of-place question or remark that may cause a parent to wince is often greeted with delight by a grandparent. Partially this is because grandparents usually spend less time with a child than parents do, and thus are less likely to feel their patience unraveling. But it is also true that a grandparent may be happy to rediscover the pleasures that young children provide. Having seen their own children through the traumas of adolescence and concerns of young adulthood, it can be a tonic to encounter once again, in a different context, the half-forgotten antics of childhood, now newly minted by another generation.
The grandparents you will meet in this first chapter fondly recount how their young grandchildren made them laugh with the kind of telling question kids are so good at asking, astonished them with a surprisingly acute grasp of reality, or touched them with an act of childish bravado. A small hand held out under the porch light, a comment that shouldn't have been made, a word mispronounced, a concept misunderstood, or a plot being hatched to get something a child wants maybe small events, but ones that bring joy to the doting grandparent. Whether it's a boy trying to catch Santa Claus in the act or a mock wedding for nine-year-olds, such moments find their special place in the memory book of every grandparent.
"How cute they are," we murmur.
Many grandparents I know don't get to see their grandchildren nearly as much as they'd like to. People in this country are always on the move, and it can mean a flight clear across the country to visit a son or daughter. That often means that your grandchildren are almost like different people every time you see them. But my wife Helen and I were lucky — or half lucky. We live in Cleveland, and our daughter is all the way out in Seattle, but our son Mike is only a block and a half away.
I've been a movie theater owner all my adult life. When Mike went away to college I had two theaters in Cleveland, as well as various other real estate interests. After college, to my surprise and certainly to Mike's surprise, he decided to go into business with me. This was in the Seventies when the multiplexes were really getting going. That's what attracted Mike — the chance to do something new.
So I was able to watch his kids grow up: Steven, who's in his last year of college now, and Diana, who's a freshman. Of course, we celebrated all the major holidays together, but some of my favorite memories involve Halloween. Since Helen and I were right around the corner in Shaker Heights, Steve and Diana always came trick-or-treating, and it was a treat for us to see the lengths they'd go to to disguise themselves so we wouldn't recognize them. My daughter-in-law Susan is very gifted at sewing — she does all the costumes for our community theater — so she was always able to fulfill the kids' fantasies when it came to costumes. Of course, the very fact that Steve and Diana had the best costumes of anybody who came to our door gave them away every time, although we didn't let them know that.
When Steve was nine, he came dressed as an alien. He looked like something from the bar scene in Star Wars, with tentacles on his head and great bulging eyes. Diana was dressed as a ladybug. They were cute as all get-out. About an hour later, when we thought we'd seen the last of the troops for that Halloween, the doorbell rang again. When I opened the door, there was a single child, with a simple costume, just a sheet over his head and a cowboy hat. There weren't even any eyeholes in the sheet, and since it was after dark, I kind of wondered how he was getting around the neighborhood, but I guessed he must be raising the sheet between houses and then putting it back down again just before he rang the bell.
The cowboy ghost didn't say anything, just held out his hand. As I was putting some candy in it, I suddenly recognized whose hand it was. Steve was making a second appearance for the night. His hands had deeper lines in the palm than most kids his age, and he had very squared-off fingers — I'd have known that hand anywhere. I didn't let on, of course. He closed his hand over the candy and said thank you in a high squeaky voice, and turned and dashed down the steps. I took a peek out the front window and saw him stop and lift the sheet at the bottom of the front walk. When I told Helen who our visitor had been, she wanted to call up Mike and Susan and tell them not to worry if they discovered their son was missing. But I persuaded her not to. I had a hunch he'd try the same game with his parents and I didn't want to spoil the fun.
The next day at the office, I asked Mike if he'd had a late visit from a lone cowboy, and he laughed and said, "Hit you, too, did he?" Mike had recognized Steve's hand just as I did...