How Neighbors Became ‘Grandparents’

“Color with me!” my 2-year-old granddaughter said again. Hadn’t we just spent the past couple of hours doing just that? Fortunately, one thing grandmas have is patience, so I picked up the purple marker, wrote “GABBY” on the paper, and drew my best tulip.

During the week of Gabby’s visit, we colored enough pages for a year’s worth of refrigerator art. Once a picture was sufficiently finished, Gabby promptly forgot about it and concentrated on her next masterpiece.

“I don’t want to go home,” Gabby said, as I slipped a clean sheet of paper under the red marker wobbling in her hand. “I want to stay with you, Grandma.” A faint smile crossed my face. I had heard those same words many years ago from my own young daughter, Gabby’s mother, about her “grandma” across the street.

“I’m going to Grandma’s house. She takes care of me,” my daughter Brandi threatened in her 2-year-old logic, when she didn’t like what was happening at home. Brandishing a pout to accompany her defiance, she scampered across the street to her adopted grandparents’ house.

Tender Connection

Violet and Webb Bailey lived across the street from us. Violet and I worked for the same school district, and I had taught her son a few years earlier. Yet we had remained “front porch neighbors” in our snug subdivision until the children came along. What a difference that made. Babies have a way of capturing hearts, especially from people who have an abundance of love to share. My children grew up with an extra grandma and grandpa, not related by blood but as close to their hearts as their related grandparents.