Dear LPG, 

I think that I am a particularly lucky grandparent because my grandchildren still live so close that I get to see them every day as I take them to and from school.  I know that so many grandparents are not so lucky these days because of that habit our children have developed where they move miles, cities, and countries away from where they grew up.    The irony is that every now and then I have a bit of a moan because there are days when I have to keep my promise and take a walk I would sometimes rather not bother with, while many of my friends whose grandchildren live too far away for this to happen remind me how lucky I am to be able to see so much of them.

Often we hands-on grandparents think that our children (our grandchildren’s parents) are the people getting the greatest benefit out of all this but there are benefits for us oldies as well. 

While walking home with my seven-year-old grandson one day not so long ago, he explained that his class had discussed that age old question, ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’.  He mentioned his wish to be a crew member on a space ship.  The sad thing is that we grownups are so ready to dismiss an answer like that with a silent comment like, ‘Never mind, he’ll grow out of it’, but his comment got me thinking...

…Not so much about what I wanted to be but about some of the things I was so set on doing when I was that age. I was going to be a pop star when I was young and as anyone would imagine that dream never really came off.

With all the 20/20 vision that life’s hindsight gives us, it is so easy to dismiss those dreams because so many of us have been side-tracked from our aspirations by the life, work and jobs we had to do just to stay solvent, and so many other variables.  

But in our younger retirement years, once we have taken the holiday and done all those things we do in the first few months, we are at the best place to revisit some of those dreams and make them come true; health permitting.  It is true that many of us are a bit slower but whatever our income is going to be is set, so we don’t have to worry about money.  It may well be that we might have to water them down a little or restructure them a little to make them viable but don’t make the mistake of putting them off any longer.

I hope that LPG has posted my message on the right day because, if they have, today is ‘Make Your Dreams Come True Day’ and, at this time of the year, when Christmas is over and, while we are waiting for summer, all we have to look forward to is a dark and dank winter.  So between the times that you do the school run (or not) make a point of getting back to whatever it was that you said you really wanted to do when you and your grandma, or granddad, were having the opposite ends of that conversation on the way home from your primary school all that time ago…

IW, Bell Green

LPG offers a little on the significance of the day’s celebration…

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LPG found some children talking about what they want to be when they grow up…

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