How well do you know your grandparents?

It may seem like a dumb question if you are lucky enough to live near grandparents and if you spend a lot of time talking with them.

But even with that scenario you may not know your grandparents as well as you think you do unless they shared their personal stories with you.

What happens far too often is that we think we know our parents and grandparents. But it isn’t until they are gone forever that we realize we wish we knew more about them.

I know absolutely nothing about my grandparents’ life in Italy. I wish I would have learned more when I had the chance.

I know the basic fabric of my mother’s life. What I don’t know is how she survived being a kid of 10 years old booted out of her home by her tyrant of a father.

I know she lived with her older sister, swapping cleaning and baby sitting services for a roof over her head. She also cleaned homes for others to pay for her school clothes.

We talked about facts like that but not about feelings. That may be fairly common in many families. I wonder now how a 10-year-old could survive that.

Parents and grandparents seldom pass along their stories from their much younger life - stories that illuminate their history as well as their character.

Many kids take parents for granted. They see parents as caregivers and rule enforcers, not as the amazing people they should get to know better.

That was brought home to me once again when I received two requests on Ancestry.com from distant cousins. They said after their mother died they realized they knew so little about her. They knew her as the mother who struggled to raise them after her husband walked out. They knew her sadness, her frequent tears and her struggles to cope. What they didn’t know was the amazing accomplishments of their mother, Marie.

She was one of the most influential people in my young life.

She was captain of the cheerleading squad, May Queen and a top student in every subject. When senior awards were given out, she was named top student in math, science, language arts and music.

Sadly, she never took the college scholarship she was offered. Her boyfriend talked her into bypassing education to marry him a month after high school graduation.

When he left her for another woman, she never recovered, and her daughters saw her only as a weak woman who couldn’t cope.

I was happy to share stories to show her daughters another side of their mother.

My father only went up to fifth grade before he had to quit school to work in a coal hole to help support his family after his father died.

I grew up enthralled by what I called his “poor stories.”

He was my hero because I knew he would do anything he had to do to provide for his family.

By the time my daughters were teenagers, my dad was no longer telling his survival stories. My grandchildren never got to know much about their special grandfather. In two generations, our family when from financial struggling to the rarefied enriched life my grandchildren know. They have travel and successes my father never dreamed of. They know nothing about a miner’s life or the little boy who had to grow up fast to help put food on the table.

For the past few years I have been acutely aware of the fact that my grandkids know little about me. They know me as the doting grandmother who traveled to be there for their concerts, special events and graduations. They know I am the last of the line, their last remaining grandparent.

But they know little about me. They don’t know my stories. They don’t know much about what makes me tick, to coin a phrase.

Years ago I realized when my family gets together we all have a wonderful time together. But after staying with them for 10 days when I leave I know my grandkids still don’t know much about me as a person.

And I don’t know the young adults they have grown into. I’m there for all of their big events, but there is so much I don’t know about them.

What are their goals, their truest beliefs? What are their struggles? Where do they find their strength?

The one thing I never wanted was what I call “cardboard grandchildren.” I didn’t want photographs to be our only connection. But we live far apart and our worlds are far apart.

Once grandkids are young adults it’s difficult to get everyone in the same place at the same time.

It’s a problem many grandparents understand. They say, oh, my kids and grandkids are busy with their own lives. Yes, but the day might come when they wish they spent more time with us.

One Christmas I told my grandkids the gift I wanted from them was “presence, not presents.”

I wanted a one-on-one lunch with each of them, and that’s exactly what I got. It was glorious.

COVID-19 interrupted those family times, but hopefully we are gearing up to start again.

Want to give your family a precious gift?

Share your stories while you still can.

Contact Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net.