The Grandma Diaries

My 5-year-old grandson gets help in hooking up an old John Deere disc to an even older Ford tractor, both dredged up from my basement. The toys have been waiting 30 years for a little boy to come play with them again!

Recycling the old toys

Years ago, I visited my Aunt Mary, the oldest of five sisters in my mother's family, and I was impressed by one of her bedrooms, which was decorated with the toy cars from my cousin's youth. I stood in rapture, looking at large cast metal cars from the 1940's.

As I gazed into Aunt Mary's vintage bedroom, I thought, "When I have children, I am going to save their toys for my grandchildren to play with!"

My mother never had the opportunity to save our things. We moved too much--Missouri, Texas, back to Missouri--leaving a trail of old toys and childish "treasures," pitched in the trash or (if they were worth something) left with...you guessed it--her sister Mary. To walk through Aunt Mary's mausoleum of a house was to see my old elephant toy box or my brother's bouncy horse.

Now I am my aunt. Well, I take that back--I do not have a mausoleum for a house. I just have a house full of junk! Instead of throwing the kids' things away, I just boxed them up and took them to the basement.

This weekend, when my 5-year-old grandson Evan was bemoaning the fact that he could find only three tractors to dig out of the toy box in the living room, I thought, "Aha!"

It all came back to me--that hour or two I spent, scrubbing a large muddy Ford tractor I had stuck back in a corner of the basement. It was no easy task. The last time my son played with it in the big mud hole beside the house, he had gotten it hopelessly mired in the red clay mud that is native to our hill.

I had my reward, though, when I saw the delight with which that old battered tractor was greeted! My grandson was as pleased as if the tractor were fresh off the shelf at Kids R Us!

I think the tractor is all the more special to him, because it belonged to his daddy.

As I watch that little boy play on the floor, where his father used to play, I feel a great joy well up in my heart...

Dear God, thank you for giving us grandchildren and a second chance to watch our children grow up before our eyes! Maybe this time, we can get it right!

Life is good!