REMEMBERING MY GRANDPARENTS

I’m encouraging readers to remember special people who have made life lovely, who made us feel loved, who taught us to love and give us good reason to love God. My mind gravitates to my grandparents, Mama and Papa Howell. I can announce with total objectivity that they were the finest, most loving and wonderful grandparents any child has ever had. If you want to contend with me on behalf of your own, I should warn you that I will never concede – and simultaneously suggest that instead of arguing with me you should simply fall on your knees and give thanks to God.

There is a profound theological meaning in people like grandparents or your parent’s home town, if you are blessed to know such loveliness. I spent most summers (all summer! – what could they have been thinking when they took me and my sister in?) and Christmases in Oakboro, a little town with one traffic light (with the colors upside down) you reach by driving through Locust, hang a right at Frog Pond, bear left at Big Lick, and you are there. My grandparents were poor, uneducated people, yet dignified, devout in the best possible way, solid, admired citizens – but none of that really matters. They loved me.