Lessons from Our Grandparents

By some accounts, I’m one of the lucky ones. At different stages in life I knew all four of my grandparents.

My memory of both sets of grandparents was after they retired. For my dad’s mom, retirement was relative. So far as I knew, she was a stay-at-home Amish/Mennonite woman who could outwork a lot of men in the 21st century.

That’s just the way it was done. Men worked the farm, or whatever outside, and women managed the house and the children. That’s just the way it was.

The few times I was at their house, she was known for her cooking; old style, taking what seemed like an empty cupboard a...