Grandparents The Ignored Google
Grandparents sell the house to move into smaller accommodation. Grandchildren can help.
One grandparent passes on to the next life. The remaining one sells the home that hosted many Thanksgiving dinners and moves into a condo complex. Grandchildren can help.
Whatever the case, there are lots of boxes and suitcases to open to reveal clothes that look like they are from horror or Blaxploitation movies.
Grandchildren will find them hilarious but it is family history, sports history, music history and what was happening in the country at the time.
Grandchildren helping grandparents is highly unlikely because the youth find old depressing. It’s worse in the digital age because Google and YouTube are default parents. I found my own grandparents boring, now look at me, having so many questions but no one to answer them.
Mama applied some blackmail, like a pair of shoes I could only get if I took the bus to e-Nanda, my grandparents farm. A tennis trip could also be conditional on visiting khulu (grandma). Grandfather passed on first.
Helping grandparents dust certain objects to send them to second hand stores or throw them out is an educational experience for grandchildren. Kids take the incredible cellphone camera for granted. Some of them have never seen an old school camera. Grandma might have four.
What kids regard as ‘junk’ can actually help them with their high school or college assignments. Take Germany for example. Grandparents’ basements might have objects that prove Germany used to be one country, then two countries, and back to one country.
African American grandparents have horrific memories, lynching, land theft and Jim Crow. Grandchildren must help grandparents clean the basement, the loft or that spare bedroom. There is some cool stuff in there.
Grandparents’ basements might have family albums and that question: ‘Grandma, who is this?’
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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