What Our Grandparents Knew

Most Sundays after church I go to lunch with the older folks. All around my parents' age, and I am middle aged myself. They are most of them grandparents. I do my share of talking. But I like to listen too, as they have seen a lot between them, including most misfortunes you are likely to suffer. Human knowledge accretes over time. But what any one of us knows varies from person to person and generation to generation. And our grandparents knew some important things that we have forgotten.

Like how to fix things. Most of our grandfathers did not make enough money to replace things, or to hire someone for every little problem. Nor did they live in our modern service economy where there is a "guy" for everything. They went to the hardware store and got the parts to fix it themselves. Then they put an addition on the house or built whole houses with kits they ordered in the mail. And our grandmothers kept their socks darned, their blue jeans patched, and everyone's whites looking white. When they could not mend the clothes anymore, they made quilts from the scraps and sewed Easter dresses from flour sacks.

I am from Generation-X. Our grandparents were from the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation. More than anything what those people knew how to do that most of us have forgotten is how to suffer well. Their most formative experiences were World Wars and The Great Depression, and they were so determined that their children and grandchildren would not go through the same things, that they created the prosperity of the post-war era that has been what every generation since wants to return to. They knew how to garden, and how to can, and how to cook meals from scratch. They knew how to use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Even after they had enough, because they had never lived any other way. I was fortunate to know one set of my great grandparents well. She could pinch a penny so hard it would make Lincoln yelp and never threw anything away. He knew how to fix or jury rig most anything, and he took care of what he owned. He was old my entire life, but he was joyful in a way that seemed like he would go on forever if a tractor had not turned over on him.

Our grandparents knew how to make friends too. Before everyone had a phone in their pocket, with access to the world wide web, you had to be intentional if you wanted to stay in touch. They kept up with their childhood friends, and Army buddies, and the people they worked with even after they retired. They joined garden clubs, and went to church, and they talked to everyone. They knew how to be patient and how to listen. They were good storytellers. The only way anyone found out about things which did not make it into the paper was word of mouth. They knew that love is a thing you make and not a thing you find. So, they courted and wrote love letters, and they stayed together.

They did not always have hot and cold air at the turn of a knob. So, they understood natural cycles, weather patterns, and the changing of the seasons. They had summer clothes and winter clothes. They paid attention to their surroundings, and they knew five ways to get where they were going, because they never had a GPS and rarely a road atlas. Even if they lived in the city most seemed to have spent time enough with country relatives to know how to be useful on a smallholding or woodlot. They could name trees and wildflowers.

Yes, our grandmothers were right all along. Gardening, canning, sewing, and all those things are neat. Dinner should be at 5 pm, you should say grace and leave the table a little hungry. Then sit on the porch or go for a little walk. And going to bed at 9 is amazing. Our grandparents knew a lot more than we gave them credit for, and the world changing around them did not make them wrong. Author Donald Kingsbury wrote "Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back."

Our grandparents knew things and possessed resourcefulness which would help us address the problems of today. But if your family is anything like mine, they did not always deal with their own that well. Suffering needlessly at times with things they could have changed. We can preserve the knowledge of the past in a way that integrates it into our modern lives and avoids past mistakes. So, if you are young enough that your grandparents are still around, I hope you talk to them about what they know, and what they would do different looking back. Before they are gone.