Well, hello everybody. It is a beautiful day to bust some cognitive distortions. My name is Suzanne Swain, EDS LMSW, and I'm a kid therapist in rural America, down in beautiful Tennessee. Hey Dolly. And today I want to talk about something grand. What's the grandest gesture you've ever done for someone? What is the most like, wow, I did that for someone. Maybe something you built or you made for a holiday or birthday. I don't know. But when I think of grand, I think of grandparents. Right? You see, I did a little research. It turns out about two and a half million kids in America, according to the census, that's back in 2021, are being raised by grandparents. And something that I saw this year, as I meaning to talk to you all about my school year and some different things that come up. Yeah, folks, I had about half of my clientele being raised by grandparents. Well, why? Well, in rural America, a lot of times we have issues with substance abuse and that sort of thing. So sadly, while their family is dealing with their substance issue, perhaps, or whatever the reason may be, although that was very common, the grandparents end up taking custody of kiddos, you guys. So raise your hand if you were being raised by a grandparent. If you're in a car right now with a grandparent, look over and smile and be like, well, hello. Yeah. So I want to tell you a little bit about my grandparents. So I think for the for y'all to understand a very key fact, a lot of y'all, I love you so much. But I want to say hello to like Nene, TT, Phi Phi, Glam, me, all the stuff like y'all have so many names. My grandparents were called Grandma and Grandpa or Grand or Granny, but never like, like some little like cutesy name. And that's fine. I love that you maybe do that, but the word grand is in grandparent. And so let me tell you a little bit about mine and maybe you'll see what I mean. Well, for starters, on my mother's side, which all of my grandparents are gone, but there's anything interesting story about the last one. But in any case, my grandparents passed away when I was in high school and but they were really interesting people. My grandfather fought in World War II and earned the Purple Heart I always love to look at his medals. And they had this little condo type of thing in a retirement home where I learned to play things like shuffleboard, which is amazing. And we would shoot pool and things like that. And then he would take me to Dunkin Donuts from time to get a glazed and hot chocolate. And I thought that was the coolest thing in the whole wide world. Sometimes I got sprinkles and that was all right. So anyway, so that started my whole unfortunate obsession with Dunkin Donuts, but they had little booths back then and the waitress could kind of walk up through the booths. It was really neat. It was like a little maze. So he worked on fighter jets. And so the F's, what is it, the Blackbird, he worked on that for Pratt and Whitney aircraft and ended up getting my mom a job when she was young as a programmer. She ended up being a computer programmer, which some of the work they did, it was very hidden figures, they ended up making word perfect. So that's really cool. So go mom. Any case. And so anyway, when he came back from the war, he did a lot of mechanic type work and things like that. And he was married to my grandmother. Her name was Marion. His name was Henry. And Marion's really interesting. She developed polio when she was a child. Now polio is a highly contractable disease back then. And what it would do is your bones become very weak and almost like spaghetti. And unfortunately, her left arm was completely limp. She wasn't able to use any of it. And it happened to her when she was young. And now you get vaccinated for that sort of thing and so on. So we most likely have vaccination for that. Although I think it's becoming somewhat controversial now. But we'll not get into that. But in any case, yeah, her arm was very weak. And so she'd wear a purse and then she'd have to pick up her arm and kind of slide it through the purse. And she loved diet black cherry soda. And she was diabetic. So she had to go sugar free on everything. But she had this really good diet black cherry. I think it was Shasta drink back in the day and put them in these really fancy cups. So that was a lot of fun. And we like to watch a lot of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. So that was a lot of fun as a child. But in any case, my mom, though, so what about my mom? Well, when you have polio, it's pretty uncommon for you to have kids. It can be a problem sometimes. So the great mystery in our family is was my mother adopted? We don't know. My mom's gone. They're gone. No way to really tell. And we're not going to go through the cost of figuring all that out. But in any case, what was interesting about Marion is that she had a sister. And the sister worked in a baby ward. She helped to be like kind of like a midwife type of thing. And she helped to deliver kids. Well, after the war, there were a lot of kids born that needed homes and stuff. So we kind of wonder if maybe my mom was adopted. She didn't look like them. She didn't act like them. They were Germanic descent. And so they were like blue eyes and blonde mom with sort of olive skin and had dark brown eyes and stuff. So I don't know. It's a mystery that we may never solve. But you know, always kind of interesting. So she was really neat. And she wore this beautiful double heart diamond necklace that was like just absolutely fascinating. It was beautiful. But she wore it every single day. And she's like, I never take off my good jewelry. So I think we have it in safe somewhere. And I think about that pendant quite a bit. But really interesting lady and raised my mom and there was only one child in the household. So I found her to be a really interesting lady to talk to. She taught me a lot about etiquette and things like that. All right. My dad's side of the family. Well, this is interesting. I never met my biological grandfather. He passed away when my dad was a kid, unfortunately. And I that my heart breaks for him for that. And so my grandmother, she actually got remarried to a man named George. And he was a really handy kind of guy. In fact, they had a house that they decided to build in Alabama. And we're talking senior citizens like Golden Girl style. Imagine the Golden Girls trying to build a house. And we're talking chopping down logs and planing wood and like piece by piece. Them and he hired like one or two guys from around town. That was in a little town called Coleman, Alabama. What up Coleman? So I spent a lot of summers at that house, but they literally built the house from the ground up when they were in their, I think, 60s. So very interesting. My grandmother, her name was Geraldine. She went by Jerry. Now, my grandmother passed away about a year ago, but guess what? She was 101. Yeah, just process that she was 101. So wow, grandma. Now, the neat thing about my grandmother is this, my grandmother was from New York. And she used to like to call me Suzanne. And so she'd be like, Oh, Suzanne, what are you doing? I love you so much. What's going on in school? Blah, blah, blah. And I was Suzanne all the time. And my friend Amanda finds that to be really hilarious when I do my grandma voice, but she's like, Oh, you know, a chickpea is neither a chick nor a pea. Discuss type of thing. Well, she told me that when she lived in New York city before my father and my aunt were born on D, she worked near Radio City Music Hall. And so one of the things she would do is on her lunch break, she always did like the secretarial type work and things like that and ended up working for the school board down in Florida where I'm from. And what she would do is during her lunch break, she knew where the Rockettes would hang out during their lunch break. So she would take her lunch break at the same time and go and hang out with the Rockettes. Can you imagine? And they were like all eating out of a lunch pail and just sitting in a big line. And she became friends with a bunch of Rockettes. So she used to talk stories about what those girls were like and what the world was from her point of view back then. And then they ended up moving to Florida. Now she moved to Florida as a single mom with two kids, two toddlers basically. So they moved down to South Florida to West Palm Beach to kind of start a new life and see what my real biological grandpa had passed away and things like that. So she ended up moving to Florida to Riviera Beach, Florida, where my family basically is really rooted. So my dad kind of grew up there. And then my mom and my dad met at one of the dances that they would have on Friday night. So my grandmother put my dad through Catholic school and he had to kind of work his way through and things. So he always had a job and things like that. He was a busy guy, but she raised the family and things like that. But she used to love to be like, oh, Suzanne, when you were young, I remember that you'd look at the vacuum cleaning, you trace all the lettuce and it was so cool. She also could cook. Man, can she cook? My dad's side of the family are known to be cooks, that's for sure. My auntie is one of the best cooks I've ever seen. And but grandma, she knew how to make some like ratatouille type of stuff. She made little pickles, squashes, she grew in the garden and in Alabama, she planted all these blueberries. I have never seen giant blueberry bushes before. These things were like 15 feet tall and probably 15 feet wide and she had probably 20 of them. So in the summer, one of my favorite things to do is at her house in Alabama. She also lived in Florida, had an apartment. But at her house in Alabama, when she'd be there in the summer, she'd let me go out and pick as many blueberries as I could possibly eat. Thus making me learn that blueberries can make you smarter. Very cool. But I'd sit in the blueberry patch, like completely hidden from the entire world, eating blueberries and reading books. It was bliss. The blueberry summers. So grandma introduced me to all wonderful things, blueberry, and could make some very mean breakfast. And so I miss her terribly and she always kind of believed in me and she loved dogs. I had a mean nasty dog one time that I was fostering, but boy is this thing rotten. She I love dogs, but I just, I think there was something really wrong. But this dog didn't like anybody and this dog loved her and was like jumping up in her lap shoes in her 90s. I'm like, do not kill grandma. You may not do that. No. Sophie just hopped right up there, crawled up in her lap and poof. Luckily, Sophie turned out just fine. But who knew? So we need to think about our grandparents a little bit. And September 7th is grandparents day. So I'm not sure when you're listening to this, but do something grand for your grandparents. And if you are a grandparent, you have a grand story to tell. I am so thankful for that Rockette story. And every time I see the Rockettes on the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, I'm always like, go grandma. There's also a really cool picture of her that's very, I think it's from like the 1940s maybe. And she has this really cool little fascinator hat or type of hat, a fascinator on and she's got like this cute little tweed suit and she just looks fierce as I'll get out. So I hope I got a little bit of her fierceness. But like your grandparents, you've maybe got a bit of their spirit too. So kiddos, why don't you thank your grandparents? If you live with them, maybe see them as a really good way to tell stories. In fact, a lot of Native American cultures, their grandparents and so on, an extended family, that's how you learn stories. So if you don't listen, you can't learn, right? So anyway, I want to say thank you to the grandparents out there who are raising kids and living it up. I understand if you did this once before, you're doing this again and you're like, what are these kids even looking at right now? I don't know anything about any of this technology and stuff like that. But don't worry, I'm coming to help you. So we are going to do an episode about technology. So you might want to check that out really soon. But until then, embrace the word grand in grandma or grandpa. You are a grand individual who's led a grand life. And in the case of you raising a kiddo, hey kids, check it out. It's pretty grand that they're raising you, isn't it? That takes guts. It really does. It takes moxie, it takes guts, moxie, faith and a whole lot of blessings. So thank you grandparents. I appreciate you and to my grandparents who have helped my kiddos come into therapy, thank you so much for being open to that idea. We're here to help and I'm so glad that I now can help these kiddos and work with them throughout the year and work with you too to help you feel more comfortable. So check out the technology one. It's coming up later on this season. If you want to check out our website, it's www.msmeriapoppins.com. And if you'd like to drop a little on the candy jar or subscribe to this podcast, I would greatly appreciate it. Share it with your friends, fellow teachers, parents, anybody that's dealing with kiddos or kiddos yourselves. I hope you can share this podcast with someone. Whoa, I think we're going to go talking about virtual reality next time. So check it out. Everybody stay clever little foxes and have a great day. Y'all are grand.
