Grandparents Day

You're not going to believe this but there's a National Grandparents Day. Frankly, no one in my family had ever heard of it.

Here's the story. Back in 1970, Marian McQuade, a West Virginia housewife, came up with the idea of a day set aside to encourage families to visit their elderly relatives. With a firm resolve to make it happen, she began lobbying policymakers. McQuade got through to her Senators, Jennings Randolph and Robert Byrd, who introduced a resolution to make Grandparents Day a national holiday. It took a while to reach the White House, but finally, in 1978, the resolution declaring National Grandparents Day as the first Sunday after Labor Day, was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter of the United States of America.

It was in 1979 that President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the first Sunday after Labor Day each year as National Grandparents Day (September was chosen to signify the "autumn" years of life). In part, the proclamation reads:

Grandparents are our continuing tie to the near-past, to the events and beliefs and experiences that so strongly affect our lives and the world around us. Whether they are our own or surrogate grandparents who fill some of the gaps in our mobile society, our senior generation also provides our society a link to our national heritage and traditions.

We all know grandparents whose values transcend passing fads and pressures, and who possess the wisdom of distilled pain and joy. Because they are usually free to love and guide and befriend the young without having to take daily responsibility for them, they can often reach out past pride and fear of failure and close the space between generations.

In the Philippines, we’ve celebrated Grandparents last September 13, 2009. And last September 19, 2009 was the RACMM’s post celebration of Grandparents Day. The lolos and the lolas of Miraculous Medal foundation Inc werevery happy to see us for the second time. They become happier and excited when we announced that we wanted to celebrate Grandparents Day with them. Together with the 18 elders of MMFCI and the members of RCMM the celebration was a success. We were heartfully welcome by the Directess of MMFCI, Sites Letty. Quoting her, “your activity/celebration was very timely because tomorrow’s homily is all about service for others”. She was very thankful that always chose their foundation whenever the RCMM has a project for elders. The program becomes more exciting during games. The first game was “fan relay”. Looking the lolos and the lolas enjoying what they are doing was a happy fullfilment for the club. But the highlight of the program was the game “Paypay o Baybay”, a “Pera o Bayong” inspired game of a noon time show. Lola Menchie outwit other lolos and lolas inthe question and answer part of the gameand made it to the jackpot round. Sir Chock, the host of the game, start offering Lola Menchie 25 cents in exchange for her pamaypay. But untiul the end of the game where she was offered P200, she still chose her pamaypay and won a bag of groceries.

They feel so loved and cared all throughout the activity. The smile on their faces were unexplainable, their cooperation throughout the program was very untiring, and the happiness they felt after the activity was very overwhelming.

With the ending statement of RCMM President, Paolo Naive, quoting “hopefully and definitely this not the last time that we will be here sharing our joys with you and making you happy”. And this was seconded by the lolos and lolas keeping in their hearts the promise that definitely we will go back and share the joys of life with them.