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''' HONOURING THY
GRANDPARENTS '''
Samurai Mary and Rabo often talked very emotionally about their grandmother. My listening was apt.
One great nephew, -now a distinguished Professor in U.S. considered his grandmother, that is my mother, an Icon. I agree. And my mother never went to school.
Mom understood the University of Life better than anyone I ever met But then Mom was also a rare Poet!
Alas,......!
I sincerely hope and pray that all grandparents will join up and bless us with their presence, knowledge and wisdom.
And now back to the honour of the continuing Post:
Visiting Pemberton Park inspires both hope an gloom. On a positive note, resident grandmothers describe tireless efforts to bring stability to the lives of their children's children.
Lois Powell, wheelchair-bound at 59, has been raising her teenage step-daughter since she was a baby. She is ''really old-fashioned'' with her, stressing the need to finish the school.
Ross Stigger, 61, twice went to court to win custody of her granddaughters, fearing for their welfare with an errant mother and a father (her son) in and out of prison. Miss Stigger longs for her girls to attend College, as she never did.
Pemberton Park is a support group in bricks and mortar, she beams : the grandmothers ''have each other's backs''.
On a bleaker note, the grandmothers describe a society in bad shape. Miss Stigger has worked her whole life and still does. Coming generations may never know such stability.
Too often, it is ''babies having babies'' , she says. That creates parents too young or poorly educated to land a job that pays enough to bring up a family : ''Then they drop them off at Mom's''.
The grandmother's struggle with modern schoolwork -mathematics is a special trial, modern morals and sheer exhaustion. Absent parents drop in for disruptive, fleeting visits, flashing cash and shiny possessions.
Most youngsters want to do Grandma proud, says Lotoya Walker, Pemberton Park's resident counsellor. But they also see her as ''the person who nags all the time.''
Samuel Mchenry, a legal-aid lawyer, has worked with grandparents for more than 20 years. He can list the crises that send them to his downtown office in Kansas City, anxiously seeking guardianship of a child.
Perhaps one in ten cases involves a parent's death. Those are simple, unless competing grandparents start fighting, sighs McHenry, a gentle, world-weary sort.
It is not unusual for military parents to grant temporary guardianship to grandparents when they are deployed. About a third of his casework involves parents jailed for drugs or too addicted to cope with raising children.
Roughly half of the time, parents ''just took off''. Here too rugs are usually suspected. Some big changes jump out: the grandparents in his office are getting much younger, with a median age in the late 40s now.
Mr McHenry's clients are poor, but he sees plenty of lawyers at court, representing more affluent grandparents in similar straits. What we all have in common is that they are trying to save their families, after early disasters.
That, perhaps, should nudge the onlooker towards wary optimism. Kansas City's grandmother's inhabit a society under great strain. But they head families of amazing resilience, built on a faith in second chances buttressed by hard work.
That is not nothing. !WOW! wishes them every luck and prays for them and the children they are raising. !Amen!
With respectful dedication to the Students of the world. See Ya all on !WOW! the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:
'''Destiny Beckons'''
Good Night & God Bless!
SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless
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