Grandparents are Grand Indeed

When Andrew had the interview for his current job, I hopped in the car along with him and then drove the additional 40 minutes to have lunch with my grandparents. On my way there, I realized that since I'd reached my teen years, I'd never actually spent time alone with my grandparents - I'd always tagged along with my parents. There was no particular reason for this, other than it was a relatively long drive at about 3 1/2 hours, and I had kept myself pretty busy in high school, college, and grad school.

On that day, sitting alone with them in their kitchen was really fun. I was able to hear the same stories that my parents had told me but from a different perspective, talk about my parents, and talk about life with people who love me very much - but who didn't raise me. I felt very grown up, which I should at age 25, but as the baby of the family, I really hadn't ever felt grown up in the presence of relatives.

My grandparents are pretty cool people. At 85, they're both incredibly active and sharp as a tack. On that particular day, they didn't believe me for a second that Andrew was "consulting" with another paper in the same company (the white lie I told them just in case Andrew didn't get an offer or didn't want to take the job), but rather started surmising how great life would be if Andrew and I moved closer to them. I felt the same way. When Andrew and I had our five minute discussion of whether he should accept the job, one of the biggest pros on my list was moving closer to my grandparents.

Today, the two of them hopped in their little red car and drove the 40 minute trip with the intent to help me make curtains, and my grandpa wanted to taste the beer that Andrew made. I'd purchased some material and a set of sheets, coming to a whopping $27 grand total, and Grandma brought her sewing machine. And, of course, a carload of food. On my counters, I now have a half dozen ripening tomatoes, peaches from Michigan, and a loaf of zucchini bread. In the pantry, I have potatoes from their garden and a squash (it's the kind that looks like a pumpkin but is green and white striped - Grandma, God bless her, handed it to me and then told me "It's a squash..." followed with baking directions - for the record, I knew that already!). In the freezer, I have bags of freezer corn. In the fridge, 4 large zucchini and a couple of peppers, also from their garden. And I think that's it. In other words, I have no reason to visit the farmer's market this weekend.

The details of making the curtains are relatively boring, other than the fact that watching my grandmother with a sewing machine was like watching a mechanic work on a car - I wondered how on earth she kept track of all the stuff on it and still couldn't figure out quite how the thing operated. At the end of it all, curtains were made and hung. The ones in the kitchen were a bit of a riot - I wanted a long valence, long enough for privacy, but short enough that I couldn't splash up water from the sink or splatters from the stove. Once we were finished, Grandma stood back and said, "well, they're different...very modern."

I knew this wasn't a compliment, since Grandma's decorative style of choice is French Country. Grandpa and I tried to dissuade her that they were perfect, but she had none of it, and made sure to remind me that I could always make new ones on my own (yeah right!).

When Andrew came home a few hours later, he of course noticed the food before the curtains (to his credit, it was spread out all over the counters) and immediately wanted a full report of what Grandpa thought of the home-brewed beer he'd made - for the record, Grandpa loved it.

Not many people get amped up about curtains, but Andrew was very pleased with our custom window treatments as well. They match the rooms, and moreover, we no longer have to stare at food-splattered, gunky mini-blinds leftover from the previous owners.

As we surveyed the improvements my grandparents had made on our house, we were once again reminded that having them so close to us is pretty grand indeed.