Freshman English Grandparent Project Example

Hi. Some of you asked for me to post my sample Grand Parent Project on the blog, so I am posting the two that I have completed so far.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

“I’ll Be Home For Christmas, You Can Count on Me…”
-For all of the Bairds, but especially for Betty and Bob
Betty Jane Baird has had a lot of Christmas mornings in her life, most of them wonderful. But one Christmas Day stands out as being especially great – the Christmas of 1945. Betty had spent the previous two Christmases – and almost three entire years - without her husband, Bob, who was serving in the US Air Corps in England. But with World War II over, many of our boys were coming home, and Betty was no different than the thousands of other young women anxiously awaiting the return of her husband.
“He’d promised me for weeks that he’d be home for Christmas,” she told me. “But for about two weeks before Christmas, we didn’t hear anything from him. This was very unusual, because we heard from him all the time.”
Christmas morning came, and Betty spent the morning with Bob’s parents. She was living with them at the time. Then around noon, the phone rang. It was Bob. He told her he was at Fort Douglas – he’d gotten in last night, but had to be “mustered out” before he could leave. “He’d said he’d be home for Christmas, and he just made it,” Betty said, laughing her trademark laugh. “We hadn’t heard from him for so long because he’d come home from England by boat, even though he was in the Air Corps.” As we spoke, neither of us could figure out why air corps would get sent home by boat when almost everyone else came home by plane, but that’s the military for you. Maybe there really is something to all those jokes on “MASH”…
That day, Bob’s parents drove Betty up to Fort Douglas to pick him up, as she didn’t have a car. After visiting with family and friends for much of the day, the young couple had to go buy Bob underwear and socks. “And those things were hard to come by in those days, you know, because of the war,” she said. Apparently, while the rest of the corpsmen were reusing their old underwear and socks on the long boat ride home, Bob just threw his overboard once they became dirty. So while Bob got the stereotypical worst gift you can get for Christmas – underwear and socks – Betty got the best gift she could have asked for.
That Christmas was just one of many they shared together. When I asked Betty about those that followed, as a mother and grandmother, she often used the word routine. I am sure, given the first few Christmases she spent as a young married woman, the normalcy of the Christmases that followed seemed wonderful. But even those normal events had a Baird twist to them.
For example, getting the tree was quite an event, she said. The entire family went together, and given the personalities of Bruce, Brett, and Marsha, let alone Bob, I can imagine the experience was both excruciating and fun. I have heard stories about going to multiple tree lots come hell and high water (and snow) to find the perfect tree. Once they found it, the family would drive home, holding the tree alongside the car through the open windows. They’d then decorate the tree with tinsel and glass balls. “They didn’t have all that fancy stuff we have nowadays,” Betty said. Afterward, when the kids weren’t around, Betty went about straightening the tinsel, getting everything just so.
And it’s not just the tree decorating that’s changed over the years, she told me. Christmas for her as a young girl was much different from how it is today, she said. Betty grew up during the Great Depression, and gift-giving was much more modest. She remembered that one year, both she and her brother, Bob, wanted a bike. And they got one for Christmas. One. Which meant they had to share. It was a boy’s bike, a blue and white one speed. “It didn’t impress me,” she said, and that’s probably a good thing, as she didn’t get to ride it much.
Betty also remembered that her mother sewed a lot at Christmas time, and that the kids always had clothes – dresses, PJs, coats… these were the kinds of things she remembered getting. She also said the family always had a tree and a good dinner on Christmas day – chicken, or sometimes rabbit, which her father raised, fresh bread, and cakes. The important thing was the family was together.
Togetherness was what got her through what she called “a tragic Christmas” – the Christmas of 1956. She was bed-ridden that year, due to terrible arthritis in her hips. This made preparation for Christmas hard. She hadn’t done any Christmas shopping before the arthritis got bad because they were waiting to get Bob’s bonus check. Bob had to kneel by her bed as they wrote the list. He then did all the shopping, “and it must have turned out all right.” Christmas morning, they had to carry Betty out to the tree so she could watch the kids open their gifts, but she could only stay out there for about an hour before having to be carried back to bed.
But for the most part, Christmas has been blessedly predictable: trees and family, meals and home. And this is something that continues to this day as we gather together at her house – her children and grandchildren, and now her great grandchildren. Coming to Grandma Betty’s for Christmas feels like coming home, like Grandpa Bob did 63 Christmases ago. It’s a feeling exemplified by that beautiful war-song lyric, which could have been written by him, or by any of us: “I’ll be home for Christmas/ You can plan on me/ Please have snow and mistletoe/ And presents on the tree/ Christmas Eve will find me/ where the love-light gleams/ I’ll be home for Christmas/ If only in my dreams.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Magi and Shepherds, and a Room at the Inn
-By Jeffrey Marshall Baird, For Grandma Great

O. Henry’s story, “The Gift of the Magi,” describes a young couple celebrating Christmas by sacrificing their most prized possession for each other. O. Henry writes,
The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

Marjorie Crofts – Grandma Great, now – loves and understands this story, because like the magi, she wisely understands the sacrifice entailed by Christmas. It is something she has lived.
The most memorable Christmas for Marjorie, the one she said she would relive again if given the chance, was the Christmas of 1945. This was a Christmas that was special to many people, as it marked the first Christmas after the end of World War II. Like many young wives, Marjorie had sacrificed and spent the previous two Christmases without her beloved husband, John M., who sacrificed for his country by serving in the Navy in the Philippines.
Marjorie had been living in Provo during the previous year, finishing school, and came up to Salt Lake to get him. Caught in a bad storm, they had to stop in Panguitch on the way down south to see her parents and ended up spending Christmas in a motel with little Muriel, who was two.
“We didn’t own a home,” she said, “so we ended up staying in the motel for a month or so.” Like another young couple on a long-ago Christmas, they were seeking shelter, and fortunately, this time, there was room at the inn.
This marked the first of many memorable Christmases John and Marjorie spent together. These were times made special not so much by the gifts they gave each other, but by the love they felt for one another. But that’s not to say there weren’t some interesting gifts.
One year, though “he never was a shopper for clothes,” John brought home a couple of dresses for Marjorie to try on. “One,” Marjorie recalled with a smile, “was kind of sparkly,” and the other was nice, too. She was supposed to see which one fit, and they both did. Evidently, John was hoping to figure out which one she liked best so he could give it to her for Christmas, but he didn’t tell her that. “So,” she said, laughing, “I ended up with two new dresses.”
Perhaps an even better gift was the year John gave her a new wedding ring, since she has worn through a few. He had the diamond from the old one placed in a necklace, and he also gave her some earrings. John, being wise, no doubt gave wise gifts.
But John wasn’t always so wise at Christmas time. One year, he was supposed to be helping her stuff the stockings and whatnot on Christmas Eve, but instead fell asleep. “Well,” she said, “I had a book for him under the tree, and I just figured, if he’s going to go to bed instead of helping me, I was going to unwrap his book and start reading it then and there.” Which she did. No doubt, John stayed awake the next year, lest he lose out on the chance to open another gift.
While the magi gave the wisest gifts, the first to worship on Christmas morning were the shepherds – and wouldn’t you know it, the shepherds played a role in one of Marjorie’s Christmases too. She told me about the Christmas when she was five, and her family was going to Ephram to visit her grandparents. Well, they piled in the old Model T Ford with the canvas windows, placed heated rocks in the floorboards to keep them warm, and made their pilgramage. Unfortunately, Marjorie came down with the chicken pox, and when it was time to go home she was still sick, so her parents left her in Ephram. She stayed the winter and, finishing the second half of first grade in the basement of Snow College. “I got my college education early,” she said.
When spring came, she went home with her uncle who worked as a sheep shearer – they were heading in the direction she needed to go, and took her into their fold. And here I have lamely related to you some eventful chronicles of a not-too foolish woman who has wisely sacrificed for her family, someone who has made love the greatest treasure of her house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who have given gifts, Marjorie is the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as she are wisest. Everywhere she is wisest. She is Grandma Great.