Grandparents' day

JEAN'S JOURNAL WITH JEAN FARRELL

Two of our grandchildren live in rural Roscommon. The girls attend a small school, in the nearby village. Recently, we were invited to attend Grandparents’ Day there.

We had never been at such an event before this, so I was looking forward to seeing what it would consist of. Also, having taught for forty years, I was looking forward to seeing their school.

As we parked, I watched many grandparents going into the school. I thought that they looked awfully old, and I wondered do we look the same!

At the door, pupils welcomed us and they reminded me of how much I miss being amongst children. I loved every minute of my teaching career.

We all sat in a big modern school hall. A young man, the principal, welcomed us warmly. He told us that each class would come in with their teacher to perform a poem or song. This they did.

My bubbly little granddaughter stood in the front row, of her class, as they prepared to sing. These are the words they sang. “When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now.” Well, a big lump came into my throat. For, when my gorgeous little granddaughter is 64, I will be long gone. In fact, I don’t want to think of her as a 64-year-old woman, at all. They continued, “Will you still need, me, will you still feed me, when I‘m 64.” I won’t ‘cos I’ll be dead! I sank into a decline thinking of such a thought!

However, I immediately rose out of my decline when the next group came on! Looking at us all, at their grandparents, they sang, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.” This lifted my spirits considerably!

We were greatly entertained by the various classes and it was all lovely.

Afterwards there was much socialising. We were invited to visit our grandchildren’s classrooms and meet their teachers. There was also tea and cakes for us all in the hall.

I was surprised to meet people who read my column, out in County Roscommon. We chatted away about our grandchildren and about how much school life has changed since we were in national school, over sixty years ago.

There was colourful art work and interesting posters on display all over this lovely bright school. The children had drawn pictures of their grandparents, which we took home.

When I was having a cup of tea, a woman sat down beside me and said that she was actually a great grandmother. She has great grandchildren all over the midlands.

She told me that she had read my article about the ‘Rage Room’ recently. This is a room into which an adult can go into, to express all their anger and frustration. They do this by smashing and wrecking everything in it (for €35.)

Reading about the rage room got her wondering what people did with intense feelings in the past, she said. On the subject of feelings, the woman told me that she had been helping her great grandson with his homework last week. The home work consisted of learning the names of different feelings and how to express these.

This great grandmother told me her own story then. She said that she had moved in with her mother-in-law when she got married, aged 20, long long ago. “My mother-in-law was a sour, contrary, nasty woman who resented me in her kitchen,” she told me. “That woman made my life a pure misery for many years. God forgive me but I grew to hate her,” she told me.

She said that helping her great grandson with his lesson on feelings brought her right back to those awful times.

“I looked at the list the child had on the table and I made myself name how I felt back then. I felt rage, anger, fury, resentment, hatred and loneliness.” I could nearly feel her rage.

She continued. “Then I looked at his page about how you express these feelings. The first way to cope, according to his home-work, was to talk about these feeling to a friend. But I had no-one to talk to about her, no-one at all,” she said to me. “My own mother lived 100 miles away and my young husband worked day and night on the small farm. Anyway, in those days you just got on with things.”

She told me that she’s thinking about this since. “Do you know what saved me? I did have someone to talk to,” she told me. “I talked to Our Lady every night. I told her every single horrible remark that woman had made to me during the day. I told Our Lady how awful she was. I told her everything. It was prayer that saved me. I firmly believe that The Blessed Virgin was listening and gave me the grace to keep going. That’s how I coped.”

I thought this was very interesting. No doubt prayer helped many a person in the past, and still does. Expression is the opposite to depression, and the beauty of prayer is that no one interrupts your story, you can give-out all you like! With deep faith you believe Divine intervention will help.

I was telling a young friend about my experience of Grandparents’ Day. She teaches in a big town. I asked her do they ever have such an event in her school. “Are you mad?” she answered. “No-one would come.” She explained why. “Ninety percent of their grandparents don’t live in Ireland. They live in Africa, in Asia or in Eastern Europe.” Different times!