Saints and Sinners: Our families’ most valuable resource
Her name was Velma Jones, but she was “Aunt Bertha” to hundreds of children in her neighborhood who called her on the telephone whenever they had a problem or just wanted someone to talk to.
Aunt Bertha got an average of 20 calls a weekend and four or five every weekday. A lot of her callers were latchkey kids who came home to an empty house every day after school.
“Sometimes I can’t get them to hang up,” she said. Many children came from homes where both parents worked and didn’t have the time — or didn’t take the time — to spend with their children.
Churches in the area where Aunt Bertha lived put her telephone number on their bulletin boards.
Grandmothers (or grandmotherly types) like Aunt Bertha may be the resource we take for granted the most. With so many mothers of school children working, grandmothers may be doing more than anyone else to hold families together as surrogate mothers.
Do we appreciate them? Well, can you think of a more touching tribute than this one delivered by an 8-year-old girl at her school’s Grandmother’s Day observance?
“A grandmother is a lady who has no children of her own, so she likes other people’s children. A grandfather is a man grandmother. He goes for walks with the boys and talks about fishing and tractors and things like that.
“Grandmothers don’t have to do anything but be there. They are old and shouldn’t play hard or run. It is enough if they drive us to the store where the pretend horse is and have lots of quarters ready. Or if they take us for walks and slow down past things like pretty leaves and caterpillars.
“They should never hurry up. Usually, they are fat, but not too fat to tie kids’ shoes. They wear glasses and funny underwear. They can take their teeth and gums off. They don’t have to be smart, only answer questions like why dogs hate cats and how God isn’t married.
“When they read to us, they don’t mind if it’s the same story again. Everybody should have one, especially if you don’t have a TV, because grandmas are the only grownups who have got time.”
I have been reading quite a bit recently about grandparents. There was an article by a columnist commenting on a report that said one-third of the freshmen in Ohio’s state colleges need to learn the basic math and English courses they should have learned in high school.
The state, he says, is going to respond in the only way it knows how: Issue new standards and ship the schools more money.
“But what needs to be done,” he says, “is something the state can’t do: equip every home with a caring grandma” — or somebody like Aunt Bertha.
This columnist learned the multiplication table, he says, while doing dishes in the kitchen with his grandmother, who also would read to him every evening after supper.
“It never occurred to me that this was a reading class,” he says. “I figured she was as interested as I was to learn whether Bert Bobbsey would come along in time to pull his little brother Freddie out of the creek.”
Another article on grandparenting that I have been reading is by family psychiatrist Dr. Arthur Kornhaber, known as the “Dr. Spock of grandparenting” and a grandfather himself.
In a culture like ours that worships youth, that gears its entertainment toward the 18- to 40-year-old group, that judges usefulness by how much one contributes to the economy, the elderly must often take a back seat.
We should not forget that by serene example they also serve who only stand and wait.
Aunt Bertha, step to the front of the line.
(George Plagenz is a syndicated columnist.)