My mom, you know, took off when I was about 6. What ended up happening is I ended up being with my grandparents.
I had family who exposed me to all sorts of different media involving actors – films, theatrical productions touring through Boston. My grandparents, particularly my mother’s parents, were huge fans of all the arts, and they took me to these shows and exhibits at a very young age, so I was just immersed in it.
I write to tell my grandchildren where they come from, and what their grandparents were up to, and I hope they will in their own way continue. I invite anyone else to listen in.
I think my generation has had an unbelievably easy time profiting from the world that was made for us by our parents and grandparents. We are essentially a rather frivolous generation. The Blair government was my generation’s shot at power. It had some good things, but it had some flaws.
My grandparents really wanted me to go to Harvard. They thought that was writing your ticket for the future. How could I turn that down? But my mom knew I needed a balance. She knew that I loved basketball.
I could enjoy the life that I had by virtue of the educational attainment that my grandparents and parents had pursued. Education was always incredibly valued in our family.
I was born in love with music. My mother is a singer. Many of my aunts and uncles on my mother’s side are musical. My grandparents sang and played blues piano. It’s literally in my blood.
I truly did feel that I owed it to my parents, my grandparents, to do whatever it was that I wanted, because if I wasn’t happy, if I wasn’t being true to myself, then I wasn’t living fully. They had given up so much so that I could live at the level that so many people are just automatically born into.
My grandparents got married at a very young age, and a lot of what I think about marriage is based on their relationship.
I would model when they wanted me, and as I got older, they wanted an older model. I was quite willing to be mother of the bride at 28. I was quite happy to be on the cover of a grandparents’ magazine at 42; I have no ego about that.
I grew up in a reform Jewish family in St. Louis. Our idea of Judaism was no bar mitzvahs and a Christmas tree that had a skirt at the bottom embroidered with the names of my grandparents.
I live in southern Appalachia, so I’m surrounded by people who work very hard for barely a living wage. It’s particularly painful that people are working the farms their parents and grandparents worked but aren’t living nearly as well.
What I like most about an aquarium is that all ages, from toddlers to pre-schoolers to retired grandparents, can really enjoy the wonders of the sea.
My grandparents used to pray five times a day, but they were quiet about their own thing. Completely liberal day by day; my grandmother was a social worker and my grandfather was an engineer, but they never talked about religion. My entire life I couldn’t remember one conversation I had with them about religion.
We should be ashamed of ourselves. We inherited the best infrastructure on the globe from our grandparents… and we’ve taken that inheritance and squandered it.
One thing I carried my whole life, especially from my grandparents in Chicago, was a huge idealism for the world.
I’m Cuban. Both my parents are Cuban. My grandparents are, too. Although I have no idea where Fit comes from.
Imagine that everything you are typing is being read by the person you are applying to for your first job. Imagine that it’s all going to be seen by your parents and your grandparents and your grandchildren as well.
My grandparents were all born in the U.S., but their parents came from Ireland.
It is so important that British children are taught about the World Wars that their great grandparents fought in and lived through. It was a terrifying time.
It was sort of just a family sport. My mom and dad were pretty keen golfers when I was young and so were my grandparents, and I just sort of tagged along with them.
I grew up in India during the 1960s and ’70s in a meat-eating Hindu family. Only my mother and my grandparents were vegetarians. The rest of us enjoyed eating – on special occasions – chicken or fish or mutton.
I was fortunate to be raised by loving grandparents.
My grandparents and my mom came from Cuba back in the ’60s because they were fleeing from communism and Castro. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.
There used to be grandparents who would say that if you were misbehaving the Peaky Blinders would get you, they were the bogeymen.
My grandparents had 15 children, my parents had 2 children and I won’t be having any child.
Our grandparents’ generation prefers to watch film on TV rather than going to the theatre because of the simple reason that they are really old. Watching a film for, say, two hours at a stretch is difficult for them.
I was introduced to classical music by my grandparents – my parents were mostly into folk and jazz. Even as a young man, I was literally unaware of the distinctions between any of that, and I still think it’s pointless.
My grandparents bowed to the Americans and sought to learn from them. My parents sought to be them.
Going out in Paris was like going out in the ’30s dressed like the Andrews Sisters. It was everything I’d seen in books at my grandparents’ house, only it was our generation.
I grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, with my parents and sisters, but my family would drive every weekend to Hammonton, where both my grandparents lived and where my parents were raised.
My father grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., with my grandparents. In Norwegian my name is pronounced ‘Yoo’ but my father used to call me ‘Joe.’
Rajasthan is a place I visit very often. My grandparents live in the village called Kulhariyon Ka Baas, and I am originally from Rajasthan.
Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we’re going to stop it.
I loved the stories my parents and grandparents would read to me.
My father was from Northern Ireland, and coming from somewhere like that, your faith defines you. That’s something we don’t really understand outside Northern Ireland, but because of my parents and grandparents, I’ve experienced it.
Grandparents who want to be truly helpful will do well to keep their mouths shut and their opinions to themselves until these are requested.
Without my mum, dad and my grandparents it wouldn’t have been possible to get where I am now.
I would leave school every day and walk to my grandparents’ house under the El because everyone worked. I was 6 and walking home alone from school. It was a different city and a different time.
Kids in a home with grandparents are healthier.
Why do we love our grandparents so much? Part of the reason I think has to do with the tremendous natural affection and affinity that kids have for older people, whether they are their actual grandparents or not.
My grandparents came from a typical Marathi family, where they respect the value of rules and regulations.
My parents were still living with my grandparents, on my dad’s side, when I was born, but when I was three, we moved to our own house near Luton airport. It was a typical street where the kids all played outside.
Even as a little girl, my mom never wanted me to watch BET, but when I was at my grandparents’ house, and my older cousins were there and I could watch it, I was infatuated with the idea that I could one day be a DJ or the host of a show.
We were raised in a family that had high aspirations for their children, and those high aspirations tended to be along the lines of service and high-minded beliefs, living up to your responsibilities. Both my Danforth grandparents admired service very much.
I was raised by my grandparents, and they always made sure that I had a pencil and some paper, whether we were in the car or at a restaurant. While they were enjoying a nice meal, I would be sitting there drawing funny pictures of the waitress.
If you’re lucky enough to still have grandparents, visit them, cherish them and celebrate them while you can.
Growing up, I didn’t know about the Japanese internment camps until I saw a movie of the week as an adult. I remember going, ‘How come that wasn’t covered in history class?’ Moving to California, you run into people whose grandparents lost everything and their businesses and were put in these internment camps.
Parents do the best they can. But my parents are better grandparents than they were parents.
When you hear about people in the ’50s getting married at 20, you’re like, ‘What were they thinking?’ My grandparents were together for over 50 years.
I had immigrant grandparents who came to this country and came for religious freedom and loved it, never made any money, Bronx, Brooklyn, but loved America. And they told me every day it’s the greatest country in the world.
I started in Grade 2. I went with my aunt and her boyfriend to an arena, an outdoor rink which was a block away from my grandparents. My grandpa came from Oregon. He had coached his son, my uncle, in hockey, and he was happy to get me involved in it.
I’d experienced the ’40s and ’50s by looking at my grandparents’ old clothes, books, and magazines.
