Grand Tribute to Grandma and Grandpa
By King Harris
Grandparents are way cool. At least, mine were, but a day to honor them didn’t exist when I was a youngster receiving the benefits of their wisdom.
It wasn’t until 1979, thanks to the efforts of one very determined Mrs. Marion McQuade from West Virginia that National Grandparents Day, designated for the Sunday after Labor Day, was first observed.
Mrs. McQuade, mother of 15 and grandmother to 40, believed that the older people in this country who have a lot to offer deserved to be revered with a special day of their own. Quoting the federal statute’s preamble “…to honor grandparents, to give grandparents an opportunity to show love for their children’s children, and to help children become aware of strength, information, and guidance older people can offer.”
The guidance and advice I received from all four of my grandparents was as significant and influential as that of my parents, even more so in some cases. That’s probably because I was simply in awe of folks who had seen so much of life. And they always made a different kind of fuss over me than my mom and my dad.
They didn’t so much make demands as they did to admire what ultimately was their creation by proudly adding another branch to the family tree. Sometimes all you have to do is be born and you were in there. That’s the way it was with my mother’s mother, Elizabeth, known as Nanny to all of her grandchildren.
I could do no wrong around Nanny, a gentle and gracious woman whose laughter and affable demeanor was contagious, and whose presence I admired as much as she, I’m sure, admired mine.
Nanny even had the nerve, when I was 10, to buy me one of my favorite rock ‘n’ roll records at the time, much to the angst of my mom (who held Fats Domino in low esteem despite his raucous rendition of the old standard reminiscent of my mother’s time,” Blueberry Hill”), a recording I still have to this day. No wonder Nanny was at the top of my Hit Parade.
Her husband Charles, whom we referred to as Granddaddy, wasn’t as sympathetic and much more austere, needing only a glance to keep me in line when the occasion called for it. It was a stare that might translate into, “You might be able to run circles around your grandmother, little fellow, but not me.”
I took that to mean that charisma will only get you so far in life.
I saw a lot more of my paternal grandparents because they were literally always right around the corner, either in Woodside where I grew up not far from their country home, or San Francisco where I later moved, a stone’s throw from their city house.
Lawrence and Lucie, G and Grams to their 11 grandchildren, ruled a roost known as the Harris clan. G, always the orator, was well known earlier for his famous poem about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake called, “Damndest, Finest Ruins,” acclaimed his role in the Red Cross in WWI, and later admired for operating Ames, Harris, Neville, a company that manufactured desert water bags for over heated cars.
Grams was an excellent equestrian and a patron of the opera and the arts. But their family came first. Every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, the entire brood would obligingly assemble either in city or country for the mandatory annual celebration.
G liked to believe he was in charge of this Edwardian household, but I found that questionable. Grams played her role as second fiddle, but she was the real conductor of the orchestra, a resilient and highly spiritual woman, whose advice to her grandchildren often included, “Take that jacket off, I’m hot;” “Put that sweater on I’m cold;” “There’ll be no crying in Woodside;” or “Go to thunder,” should she suffer an upset.
There was also a little devil within her soul, an amusing peculiarity I discovered more than once while spending weekends with them in the country. G for example always thought that he was eating corn grown in his garden when in reality he was chomping on an ear Grams bought at the store.
“His garden couldn’t produce a prune,” Grams once confided. Or that doctor’s orders forbade him chocolate. “Give these cookies to your grandfather, dear,” she’d command, “but don’t tell him they’re chocolate chips. He’s not supposed to have those. Let him think they’re raisins.”
The subterfuge didn’t harm old G any; he lived to the ripe old age of 91. But before he passed on, he bestowed on me a few bits of wisdom I’ll never forget. Other than telling me “not to shovel,” when I ate too fast; that there would be greater scientific and technological advances and achievements in my lifetime than his; or when asked your opinion to answer “I don’t know,” as opposed to “I have no idea” lest it reveal some stupidity on my part.
He once asked me “What do you think is life’s most important word?” Before I thought I’d better respond with “I don’t know,” he replied: “Contribute.”
I believe that’s a quality for grandparents that Mrs. Marion McQuade had in mind.
