Parenting Pointers logo








Collections—


Web Log


Grandparents (permalink)
The Perfect Grandmother is:

* wise, funny, filled with stories, on the eccentric side, strong-willed, tender (Deborah Patton, Bed and Breakfasts and Country Inns of New England)

* witty, alert, affectionate, tolerant, sympathetic, and the centre of a family circle that adores her (Robert  Underwood Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays)

* loving, sympathetic, understanding (John Wintterle, Robert Koga)

* healthy, loving, capable (Angie Williams, Intergenerational Communication Across the Life Span)

* teacher, storyteller, ancestor of the female line (Barbara Stevenson, Crossing the Bridge)

* rosy cheeks and snow-white hair pulled back in a bun (Sharon Travers, The Oak Grove)

* nary a skeleton in her closet (Larry Jaconson, The Lower Lights)

* warm and motherly (Horton Foote, Genesis of an American Playwright)

* simple-minded, indulgent, and rich (Bithia Mary Crocker, A Certain Age)

* all softness and warmth, the ideal grandmother.  Everybody loves her, and she loves everybody.  (Susan Feldman, A Certain Age)

* inspirational: "She was an ideal grandmother, and I am sure that she inspired members of successive generations just as she inspired me." (Ahmad Kathrada, Memoirs)

* stereotype of the ideal grandmother: "a traditional woman who is old, domestic, and nurturing" (Dorothy Rogers, Adult Years)

* "The ideal grandmother figure who saw all and said little" (Ana O., Impossible Princess)

* "a woman of huge energy, great authority and a wicked sense of humour" (Geoff Dench, Grandmothers: The Changing Culture)

* "a graceful, shadowy person, sitting, her feet on a hassock, like Whistler's mother; someone who has none of the impulses of youth, which, in a grandmother, the younger generation finds so disconcerting.  Even the costume of this ideal is decided upon by our exacting young people.  She shall wear, our ideal grandmother, soft black or gray draperies, a piece of beautiful old lace at her neck, or a white fichu of rare old-fashioned workmanship crossed on her bosom." (Mary Heaton Vorse, Autobiography of an Elderly Woman)
> read more from Grandparents . . .
Email thisDigg ItFark ItScape ItFurl ItReddit
Add to del.icio.usNewsvineTechnorati