it's the small things: Eight plus

My maternal grandparents gave birth to nine children, five girls and four boys, between 1940 and 1954. On the days (and nights) that are hard to parent my little girl, I think of Nanny scrubbing dirty cloth diapers by hand after waking from another sleepless night for more than a decade, preparing meals and cleaning laundry for nearly a dozen people each day, and all the other joys and frustrations that make up each day as a parent.

I try to imagine her sorrow after losing her first-born son only three months after meeting him during a penicillin shortage in World War II; my imaginings stop short of the horror of burying a child and returning home to an empty basinet. I try to imagine all of my aunts and uncles as loud, funny, opinionated children moving several times across the country, and the world, as army brats. I've heard the story recounted several times of how she brought over her oldest five children (all seven-years-old and below) across the atlantic on a military ship by herself to meet my grandfather who was working in Germany after the war. Each night after lulling all of the children to sleep, she stayed up to clean and polish each child's shoes because she did not want anyone to pity her or her beloved children. How did she parent with the patience and grace that seem synonymous with her name?

Nanny slipped away quietly in her sleep when I was just a kindergartener. I remember the smell of her three-bedroom home which still held onto the markings and memories of my mom's childhood. I remember the clothes line in the back yard, the outdated kitchen still without a dishwasher, the pretty trinkets on the little table next to her chair, and the antique wooden toys that entertained my aunts and uncles and still fascinated me and my brother. But those are the only details that my 5-year-old mind saved for me.

My grandfather passed away before he got to walk his youngest daughter, my mom, down the aisle and my grandmother passed away before I could store away her gentleness, compassion, and sacrifice. But my grandparent's legacy of goodness, faithfulness, and joy expound and multiply in the faces and works of their eight children and their spouses, their 25 grandchildren, 33 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-granddaughter. Every few years we gather again to laugh, pray, and remember together.