Free shipping on all orders over $75🎄

If I close my eyes, I can still see my favorite spot in my grandmother’s house. She had a vanity dresser with a drawer that was used just for her grandchildren. In it were a few crayons, a coloring book, and a doll or two.

I can see myself, as a little girl, opening that drawer to pull out those toys. I had a lot more at my own home, but somehow, being at her house made them much more special.

Years later, many years later, my own children would discover the wonder of that drawer as they spent time with the woman who had been my world for so much of my life.

I don’t think the toys had changed. I’m fairly certain my own children colored on the same pages I had long ago.

I think about how much I looked forward to running to that drawer every time I went over to visit. Everything about her house was special to me. It was a place full of indescribable love, one where I knew I belonged.

RELATED: My Grandmother Loved Me in Little Ways I Still Feel Today

That coloring book and those few crayons are long gone now. I imagine, after my grandmother died, that someone in their haste to clean tossed them into a trash bag thinking they were of no value. And, technically, they weren’t.

But they were. They were priceless.

Those few toys only exist in my memory now, the same place I go to visit with my grandmother nowadays.

My husband and I are the grandparents now.

The few toys we keep here at the house for our grandchildren would get lost among all the ones they play with at their own home. They probably aren’t even the type of toys they would want if given a choice, but I know they are the type embedding into their little hearts.

No one would pick a package of Q-tips off a shelf of toys, but they have been used to build many roads and railroad tracks on our living room floor. If given the choice of baby dolls and stuffed animals or the simple paper dolls I scratched out on index cards and printer paper, almost all children would choose the ones with price tags attached. But these paper people have given our grandchildren hours of pleasure.

We can afford to buy better toys for them, but I know what kind of playthings become memories. And I want us, as their grandparents, to be so deep in their hearts they can pull us out whenever they want to remember the way we’ve always loved them.

RELATED: I Thank God Every Day For the Gift of Being a Grandma

None of us can possibly know how time will move on. As a little girl, I knew my grandmother loved me more than anything. That love has carried me through many decades of life and good times as well as bad.

I still feel her love today. And I know I always will.

I want this for my precious grandchildren. So there’s a paper family taped to our wall with little cheat sheets on the back of each to help me keep them straight. And there’s a stack of toys behind our couch for little eyes to see when they come to visit. These toys show them how we are always here for them, waiting for them, ready to play with them, forever loving them.

Sometimes love is shared with words.

Sometimes it looks like a drawer with an old coloring book and a few broken crayons.

So God Made a Mother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our new book, SO GOD MADE A MOTHER available now!

Order Now

Sandy Brannan

Sandy Brannan, author of Becoming Invisible, So Much Stays Hidden, Masquerade, and Frozen in Time, is a high school English teacher. Creating memories with her grandchildren is her idea of a perfect day. You can follow Sandy and read more of her writing at https://sandybrannan.comhttp://facebook.com/sandybrannanauthor  http://instagram.com/sandybrannanauthor  and  amazon.com/author/sandybrannan .  

Raising Our Kids Near Their Grandparents is the Greatest Gift We Could Ever Give Them

In: Journal, Kids, Relationships
Raising Our Kids Near Their Grandparents is the Greatest Gift We Could Ever Give Them www.herviewfromhome.com

“Bapa?” My one-year-old says, as she toddles over with my cell phone clutched in her small hands. “Cah Bapa?”  I smile down at my daughter and take the outstretched phone. “Sure, we can call Grandpa.” She bounces on her toes as I tap the FaceTime icon, my dad’s face appearing on the screen a few seconds later.  “Bapa!” She beams, as he smiles hello to his biggest, tiny fan who stands in awe of him just a couple of blocks away.  You see, we live just down the street from my mom and dad—my husband’s parents live in the same...

Keep Reading

So God Made a Grandma

In: Journal, Motherhood
So God Made a Grandma www.herviewfromhome.com

And then, the Lord Most High looked down from Heaven and said, “I need a soft and caring soul.” So God made a grandma. It needed to be somebody willing to get up before dawn, give the baby a bottle and her daughter a break, work all day making meals, give the baby a bottle again, then change the diapers and stay up past midnight folding the laundry. So God made a grandma. It had to be somebody with strong arms to push kids in swings, yet gentle enough to rock babies to sleep. Somebody to call the grandkids in...

Keep Reading

We May Be Grandparents Now, But We’re Still Us

In: Grown Children, Motherhood
Snapshot of husband and wife, color photo

My husband and I took a selfie tonight. We don’t usually do that, but our grandchildren gave us T-shirts recently, and we wanted them to see our smiling faces as we wore their gifts. Wearing the words “My Favorite People Call Me Papa” and “Nanny Life Is the Best Life” made us both smile, but they also made us realize how much traveling has taken place on our road together. As I looked at the picture on my phone later, our entire life sort of came to me in bits and pieces. In my mind, I can clearly see a...

Keep Reading