Grandma Henke

It’s fun when your children grow up and become parents and you get to see them go through rituals and routines that you and your spouse did so many years ago.

I remember once sitting a row behind my oldest son in church when they had three little children they were trying to keep quiet. I loved it! I kept thinking “the curse works” … the one that says “when you grow up I hope you have children just like you!” It’s called the curse but in actuality it is a blessing to have new generations of children just like their parents because it brings back so many happy memories. At the time some of the memories may not have felt happy but in retrospect …. 35 years down the road … those memories are so valuable.

It’s fun to watch my children try to get their children to do their chores. In my mind I can see three generations of people doing that, as I can remember clearly my own mother trying to get me to clean my room. I can remember more than a few Saturdays when I was sent to clean my upstairs attic room and instead pulled out all of my dolls and their clothes and my dishes and accessories and played with them for hours. Now that I think about it I bet they told me to clean my room when they were sick of my jabber because they knew how long it would take me.

When I see my daughters and daughters in law putting all their youngsters into car seats and making so many trips to the car with the paraphernalia that goes along with taking a bunch of children anywhere … I feel compassion. That was hard. It was also hard to drive them very far and listen to their arguments and screams when they didn’t get ice cream, or we didn’t go fast enough, or we didn’t go where they wanted, or … even worse … someone touched them or breathed on them. I have to say this, though … in that respect today’s mother’s have it better than we did. We weren’t blessed with the seatbelt law and our kids were free to roam and punch much closer to our eardrums than they can now. Plus, our children didn’t have a DS, a portable movie theater, or Ipods with earphones. Our kids had their own music (portable cassette players) but they competed with each other in seeing who could play them louder than the others until Dad would pull over to the side of the road and gather them all up.

I remember one trip we were going to make from Blanding to Salt Lake (a 6 hour drive) and everyone was in the car and Lynn said, “Okay everyone out” let’s get the beatings over with right now. (If you know Lynn you know that is a BIG joke not a reality.) We finally found the thing that made our long drives bearable was to promise a hamburger, shake, and fries when we reached Provo to each child who kept minimal rules . Every time they got in trouble on the way one of those items (whichever one they chose) would be lost. The first trip I made up some sandwiches and drinks because I knew they would not think we were serious … but we were. It was kind of hard eating our hamburgers, fries, and shakes in front of them but the next trip was soooo much better! To get in trouble meant screaming or tantrums, spitting, pinching, hitting … or defiance. We let things go like singing the same song for 100 miles or making gross body sounds with your arm pits unless it caused someone else to do the before mentioned things.

It’s kind of fun to see my kids trying to get all of their children to agree on somewhere to go on an outing … or where to eat out. We didn’t eat out as much as families do now days so our kids were excited to get to go anywhere … and it generally involved going to where we could get the most hamburgers for our money.

One thing I wish our kids could do now is take their children to the drive in movies. When I was a child that was a huge event. Mom would make a little picnic and pack some drinks and put us in our pajamas and off we’d go to the drive in theater. We would go early enough that us kids could play on the swings and slides before it started to get dark. It was fun to see your friends there and everyone actually talked to the people in the other cars. It was like a big party. We usually went to the Ute Drive In in Sandy, Utah.

When our son, Brett, was about three years old we took him to the Ute Drive In to see Peter Pan. We were in a truck and Brett was standing on my lap watching the movie and all of a sudden he jumped out of the window, arms stretched out in front of him … so quick I couldn’t catch him. He hit the ground with a thud and screamed bloody murder. He thought he could fly and was so disappointed when he didn’t that he cried more about that than he did his scratches and scrapes.

One year for “The Boy’s” birthdays (they were a year apart) we decided to have an outside movie party for them. Lynn took our television outside and they and all their friends climbed into our big old tree and watched movies. They loved it!

So I’m glad when I hear that my grandchildren have Daddy’s who love to play with them and tickle them and tease them, and Mother’s who patiently take them to the library and the park … drag them along shopping … and to their soccer games and lessons. It does an old Grandma’s heart good.

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