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Grandparents

So much for the leisurely Sunday afternoon we had promised ourselves! It merely proves the truth of the old quip, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. The podcast will have to be done sometime tomorrow after I get back from Oxford — hopefully before Fr Anthony and Neville arrive to fix the tabernacle in position and a guest arrives for a few days. The connection between all that and grandparents may not strike you as obvious, but there is indeed a connection, and it has to do with kindness and the way in which we rely on others. Had today not been Sunday, we would have been celebrating a Memoria of SS Joachim and Anne, the maternal grandparents of the Lord Jesus. Grandparents, as any sane person (i.e. anyone under the age of seven, after which the rot sets in) will tell you, are immensely important people. They are kind, helpful and lavish with the gift of time. When one is young and needs to show off, grandparents can be relied upon to be indulgent. They can be quite good at ignoring parental rules and regulations and often seem to have endless reserves of patience (perhaps because they can wave the grandchiild goodbye at the end of the day, but that's another matter). Parents are too often worried about this and that, especially the future which never comes; but they too know how valuable grandparents are, especially when they need help with childcare as they juggle their busy lives and conflicting commitments. I was thinking about this as I watched a grandparent deal with a fretful child. The stress levels of the parents were visbly mounting and a tug of war looked likely, but the moment Grandma took the child on her lap, all was sweetness and smiles. The bond between the young and the old is very precious. Unless, sadly, they have learned otherwise, the young rely on the old with simple trust and a cheerful expectation of kindness and help; and thankfully, they are not usually disappointed. We may not be grandparents, we may ourselves be very young, but it is worth asking where we fit in this scheme of things. Do we trust, are we trustworthy?