My birthday happens on Thursday, September 8th and I’m ready to have some fun with you! I have a Kindle Fire 7″ and five (5) Amazon gift cards worth ten dollars each to give away. Everyone has the same chance to win any of them, I will use my random name chooser to select from everyone who has entered.
To enter, you need to comment on either this blog post – OR on the Bellingwood FB page under this post there. Nowhere else. If you simply put a post on the Bellingwood page or on my personal page, I will never remember to enter that into the list of names. Got it? Cool.
Your comment should be something about your grandparents. Tell me about one of them, all of them. Tell me who they were. How did they impact your life? Or maybe they didn’t, other than giving birth to your parents. Maybe tell me a funny story or something special.
If you don’t have stories to tell about your actual grandparents, tell me about someone who may have played that role in your life.
While I won’t probably comment on all of the posts, I will read them all. I promise. And read through some of the other stories that crop up. Get to know your fellow Bellingwoodians (Bellingwoodites? I’ve got nothing).
As I looked through old photos tonight for this post, I came upon these two pictures of my grandparents and realized what a powerful message there was here. How many generations of families have gone before me to bring us to this point? Lives were lived fully and deeply. People loved and worked, cried and laughed, were born and died … each generation giving way to the next until here I am. It’s a little overwhelming.
Did they think about the generations that would follow them? The possibilities for those people they would never know? In the 1700s, did a young mother even think that one of her descendants would be born in the middle of the twentieth century and wonder what that child would grow up to do?
My mother’s parents – Mac and Grammy – lived in Boston while we lived in Iowa. We didn’t see them much until they grew old enough that they needed to be cared for. Since Mom was an only child, she brought them each to Iowa at different times in her life.
Our childhood memories of them are very different from our memories when we were young adults. Both needed a lot of extra care and were self-centered and selfish because of their many limitations. But we learned a lot about loving someone because they were family, even if they didn’t know how to respond back to us.
On the other hand, my father’s family was all about love. Grandma Greenwood was the most gentle and loving woman I’ve ever known. Her life was simply … love. She sacrificed every day for those she loved, but it didn’t occur to her that she should get anything from it, except maybe a hug and a kiss. She gave up her education for years because her mother (the older woman in the picture) was an invalid, but then she learned Greek and Latin while Grandpa was in seminary, because he had such a struggle with the languages. She raised eight children as a minister’s wife with limited income and there was food on the table every night. This woman will always be the epitome of love and grace for me.
Tell me about your grandparents in a comment. I will choose the winners Friday (September 9) evening and respond to your comment, as well as create a post to let you know.
Thank you all for being part of this wonderful adventure.
