Grandparents

Sitting here, watching the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie, freezing, trying to avoid drinking the huge glass of water with my pills.
I'm thinking of the parents-in-law in RI.  I knew their parents!  I knew both parents of my mother-in-law, and so did both daughters. My son only knew his great-grandmother.  My oldest was five when her great-grand-father died.  And she'll be 40 in a couple of years.  She knew her grandparents parents.  Going back to the late 1800's.  Amazing.  And my oldest grandchildren, the youngest too, of course, know their great-grandparents.
Connections that reach out from the past.  The two oldest grandchildren knew my mother.  She had already had her stroke, so she frightened them a bit, since she couldn't talk.
My oldest daughter made sure she took both babies to my mother to have her see them.  And she loved it.
Christmas five years ago we spent in Germany, with my mother.
It was noisy, but so lovely to be there with the babies.  My brother came with his wife, and little one and the wife's sister, my brother next door was there with his daughter, the one last Christmas together.  She died the following June.
My husband's grandparents lived in CT.  They had a house right off mainstreet, 3 bedrooms, a detached garage, and a small garden.  My husband's grandfather was a carpenter, and he and my husband made a dollhouse for my oldest daughter.  I still have it, if the kids want it.  They grew tomatoes, and would save the seeds, let them dry out on paper towels on the porch, to plant them in February, so they'd be ready for planting once frost had gone.  They had a lovely mahogany dining room set with wood inlay, which we got when the house was being sold.  I ended up giving it to my oldest daughter.  They bought the set used during WWII, and paid $1500 back then.
My husband and I spent a lot of time with his grandparents, since my husband was on the police force in our small town while going to university, and his days off were usually during the middle of the week, so we often spent his off days with his grandparents.