Over the Mountains

Several years ago, after one of my daughters returned from a week at my mother’s house, I asked her what she had best liked about the experience. She furrowed her brow, thought about it, and said, “Waking up in the morning. I’d open my eyes, and for a moment I wouldn’t know where I was; then I’d look around at the room and remember that I was at Grandma’s.”

“Over the mountains,” the old poem says, “and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go.” “The bond between a child and a grandparent is the purest, least psychologically complicated form of human love,” says Dr.

Arthur Kornhaber, author of several books on grandparenting. He claims that grandparents can offer an emotional safety net when parents falter.

They pass on traditions in the form of stories, songs, games, skills, and crafts. And they have another magical ingredient that parents often lacktime. What many grandchildren appreciate most is the relaxed rhythm of life at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s. Kornhaber has found that children who are close to at least one grandparent are more emotionally secure than other children; and they have more positive feelings about older people and about the process of aging.

Grandparents are, after all, grand parents. And in the dictionary the word grand means: having more importance than others; forettwst; having higher rank; large and striking in size, scope, extent, or conception; lavish, marked by regal form and dignity; intended to impress; very good; wonderful.