Day 19 and 20, The Contentment Journal, June 21, 2019

For day 19 the prompt: What are two roles you get to play in your life that you are really grateful for? Why?

Wife-We had children so early in our marriage, I never really had much time to concentrate on being a wife.  For the next 26 years we raised 3 very active daughters while working full-time.  For about 10 of those years I was able to work at home which I just loved.  Medical transcription was good to me and I loved my job. Now I can concentrate on meeting my husband’s needs and taking care of him the best that I can.  Since retiring from the work world almost 3 years ago I have tried my hardest to take every bit of stress and chores off of his shoulders, even the yard work! Taking over the shopping and cooking was probably the most time consuming, but there were years that my youngest daughter and I were sitting at the dining room table waiting for my DH to walk in the door so we could say “What’s for Dinner!” I seriously cannot believe we did that! Why didn’t I start dinner?

Honestly he had some trouble giving up control of the food and he still mostly cooks on weekends.  It is nice to know that if for some reason I am having a really bad day with pain, I know he will pitch right in and make dinner. I do try to get some of the prep done early in the day since my pain seems to get worse as the day goes on.  But then of course, there is my own inability to moderate my activities…..though I am still trying.

My second role:  The best role ever……GRANDMA!!  I love being a grandma.  It is the job I was born to do.  I never knew either of my grandmothers, but I did have one very loved grandmother who was the 3rd wife of my grandfather on my mother’s side.  He was the kindest man, never had a bad word to say about anybody.  His third wife (my mother’s mother and his second wife both predeceased him) was Viola.  She was such a nice woman and treated us as though we were her true grandchildren.  The things I remember most are that she used to make grape jelly for me from their home grown Concord grapes.  As I grew older and had my own family, I could not make the trip down to see them as much, but she always would send home a jar of grape jelly for me.  I was so sad when she passed away.  Grandpa married again for a 4th time, but she also passed away, even though she was 15 years younger than grandpa.

Back to being a grandma.  First of all I LOVE my granddaughters, all 3 of them.  They are 10, 5 and 4.  The 10 year old and 4 year old are sisters who spend as much time as I can get them with me and grandpa.  I want to always make sure this is a fun place for them to come.  I taught the 10 year old to sew and just this week started the 4 year old on my lap, piecing some 5 inch squares that she picked out.  We always bake something or make something, this week it was strawberry jello/cool whip pie with a graham cracker crust.  Pyper (4) used the rolling pin to crush the graham crackers in the zip lock bag.  I have taught Ally (10) to make homemade macaroni and cheese by herself.   Another thing we like to do is make fairy gardens.  We have been doing it for about 4 years.  We made them last week and the girls had so much fun.

TO BE CONTINUED…….