Our Jewelry Box Of Love

The letter G in Grandparents stands for giving. We grandparents, some of us are called Nana, Grammie, Grandpa, Grandpop, Poppy,  Grandmother, Gingham or any other word your choose to be called. A lot of Jewish grandmothers like to be called Bubby which is the word for Grandmother. My mother was called Gingham just like the material. Her oldest grandchild could not say Grandmother so it came out as Gingham. My Mom was Gingham Sohmer and the other one was Gingham Friedman. They only used the last name to designate who they were talking about. When in the presence of them they were Gingham.

My kids followed the tradition and she was called Gingham. I wanted to be called Grammie and my husband is Grandpa. We grandparents love to buy the grandchildren a gift all the time. In my case, every time I see them, I give them something nice. When they are real young, you can go to the Dollar Store and get some inexpensive things. As they grow older, it costs more. At a certain age, you just give them cash or a check. When the older two were about twelve and ten, we would take them to dinner and then made a stop at Toys R Us. We usually spent around twenty dollars each.

Once the younger one picked out something for forty dollars. I said when it is your birthday or Chanuka, I will buy that for you. It is forty dollars and that is a lot. He replied “it is not forty, it is thirty-nine ninety five. That was very true and smart of him. He was only telling the truth.

I cannot pick out what young kids like so I tell my daughter-in-law to pick three each for the two of them, what they would like and I pay her for them and she keeps them at the house for three visits from us. When we come, they go upstairs and she brings the bag up and they use to think when they were younger, I brought it from home. Now they are older six and eight and they understand that Mommy picks them out and Grammie gives the money for it, so they know we gave it to them.

When we were kids, money was tight and sometimes we made our own necklaces. We did not buy the pieces in a craft store like you do now days and you can get anything at Michaels to make necklaces, rings, bracelets. There is a new one out and it is called Rainbow Loom. You buy the pack and it contains small bands and a loom and you put each band on the loom, loop the next one over and etc. and you have a multi colored bracelet and boys and girls do it. My friend’s boys make real cute ones and their father wore one to work in purple for the Ravens. Several employees asked him where he got them and so the little eight year old made them and charged them three dollars which was very inexpensive. When the father took orders, he was told they wanted all pink, or pink, blue, white or this or that in the colors.

He has a tiny little business and it does take time to make each one. I am getting them for my younger two grandchildren, each will have their own loom and the loops for it and I did not want them to share the loom because you can have arguments and it is cheaper to buy two individual ones for seventeen dollars each.

When I was a kid, we took the seeds from a cantaloupe, washed them in a strainer, let them sit out to dry for several days. Then we took a piece of heavy string, and pulled the string through each dried seed and we had a necklace of any length we wanted. Everyone had them and they cost nothing because you had eaten the cantaloupe. We would sit for hours pulling the needle into the seed and sometimes we coated the necklace of dried seeds with a topcoat used for manicures or we painted them with artist paints. Most of the times, we were tired from pulling the needle through the hardened seed, so we wore it naturally.

We were so proud of ourselves for doing this craft type chore and having an extra necklace at no cost to our parents.

My Mom would come every Saturday for dinner and she had her own manner of presents for the kids.

She would bring them a pack of Pez candies and the holder for it, she would bring several pieces of baked chicken, they liked the way she did it, she would bring them a bag of Planter’s whole peanuts in the shell. She used to send her co-worker Margaret up to Lexington Street on her lunch hour to get them for her, as it was too long a walk for Mom and Margaret, having no grandchildren herself got a kick out of doing that for Lea.

One of the number two grandchildren had a friend and he bragged to the boys that his grandfather gave him a hundred dollar bill every time he saw him.  He was asked how often does your Grandpa do that and the boy said once a year when I see him, he lives out of town.

If you are a grandparent, going to be one or even have nieces and nephews, it is a nice token for the kids to remember you by. It need not be expensive, I am at the twenty dollar per gift one because I see them every third week. If you only give them a book or something that costs even less; it is the thought not the cost.

Love is a many splendored thing, as the movie and song was titled, but no matter what you spend, a lot or a little, it is splendid and beautiful buying the gift, giving the gift and getting a big hug and Thank You.

You remember it, they treasure it and even if it only is a three dollar bracelet or necklace that you can make for them from the kit mentioned above, that is a treasure for them to treasure. You need not buy them the whole kit if you cannot afford it, you can make the bracelet, for boys and girls and bring it to them each time which is less costly for you. The kit says you can make 20 or more bracelets and that would be about ninety-five cents and you have the pleasure of creating it for them and to be proud that you could do it.

Every memory they have of you forever is a memory engraved on their heart, mind and soul.

Grandparents are golden; the grandchildren are platinum which is the highest gem.  They are our jewelry box of love