By Jeff Watson
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
I remember playing in my buddy’s backyard a thousand times. His backyard descended into a knotty forest with an endless creek. That’s where we shot our BB guns, pitched canvas tents, and played with his beagle.
One thing bothered Eddie: his grandmother sitting at the window. “I wish she wouldn’t stare at us,” he grinned one day.
I shrugged my shoulders. For me, she was part of our scenery and we were part of hers.
Now that I am a grandfather, Eddie’s grandmother makes more sense to me. When it comes to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, we are their connection to the past; they are our connection to the future.
Arthur Kornhaber, an intergenerational expert, once told me: “I can’t prove it, but I have a theory; I believe there is a powerful, positive, biological reaction in the brain whenever a grandparent or great-grandparent looks at their grandoffspring.” If he’s right, then maybe Eddie’s grandmother was just taking care of herself— without so much as an aspirin!
The Need to Connect
If the late Harvard psychologist, Erik Erikson, could join our roundtable, he might teach us again about our ongoing growth during adulthood—how we all yearn for intimacy (versus isolation), generativity (versus stagnation), and integrity (versus despair). We all want to connect; we want our lives to count and to have meaning in the end.
At the soul level, remembering is deeply spiritual. Didn’t God remind us of this, by giving the world a prophet named Zechariah—whose very name means, “The Lord remembers”? Don’t the Jewish and Christian scriptures cue us that God has a Book of Remembrance and a Book of Life?