Grandma could have been a great blogger. She would have been able to build up one of those cool, multi-dollar income generating blogs that has hundreds of followers and a Facebook page and a couple Pinterest boards for good measure.
I thought about it some more. After all, Grandma was the Original Upcycler. Born in 1922, she was a girl during the Great Depression and a young woman who became a bride during World War II. She knew how to take what she had, make it work, and make it last. The surrounding neighborhood brought all sorts of leftover fabric scraps, old clothes, and worn out blue jeans to her instead of throwing them away. She loved sorting through fabric and putting anything usable into her famous "rag bag". She would then cut them into strips and weave them into brightly colored, durable rugs. Too small for rug strips? She would stitch potholders (also brightly colored, and also very durable). Granted, her upstairs was stuffed full of boxes that she never got to in her lifetime, but hundreds - thousands? - of rags found a new use in Grandma's brightly colored, durable creations.
Do-It-Yourself projects abounded in Grandma's house. Grandpa had been a real DIY-er too (though neither of them had ever heard of the acronym) and made his own chairs, tables, furniture, toys, etc. You name it -- he could make it. One of our favorite projects was to use her homemade paste and old wallpaper sample books (more upcycling) for crafts. We were the kids with brand new bottles of Elmer's glue at our disposal, but how we loved the novelty of that gloppy paste in a plastic jar. Grandma's blog posts would have had titles like: "DIY Chair Cushions"; "Threading the Loom: A How-To Guide"; "Fleece Mitten Tutorial"; "Make Your Own Curtains"; and "87 Household Uses For Ice Cream Pails".
Until recently, I never thought that Grandma was a fashion trendsetter. She often paired her purple dress with an orange jacket and a homemade green bag, and my 15-year-old self shuddered and called it "clash". Then I discovered that fashion blogs promote virtually the same idea now, only they called it "color blocking". (She always used those homemade tote bags to carry her groceries home too, long before it was the popular thing to do.) And I think the contents of her upstairs dress-up box could have made hundreds in an online "Vintage Clothing" Etsy Shoppe.
Gourmet cooking was, well, not one of Grandma's strong points. However, she had enough of those really special recipes that she could have easily held her own in that area with any respectable blog these days. Her famous FUDGE alone could attract an entire following (as it did in her family). No one can get homemade noodles to that perfect consistency quite like Grandma did. Another special treat was making donuts at Grandma's house. Sauerkraut and Dumplings? A family favorite (provided you like the sauerkraut, because the ratio was just right that you couldn't ever really pick the sauerkraut off the dumplings -- trust me, I tried). Strawberry Jam. Good Bars. Once in awhile we experienced the very special treat of helping to make homemade butter. But what really makes my mouth water is remembering that one-of-a-kind method of toasting bread to perfection on the burner of a wood burning cook stove, and topping it with butter and a cinnamon-sugar mixture. I was always excited when it got cold enough in the fall that Grandma would announce she'd lighted the stove, and could make us Stove Toast for a snack.
Grandma had certainly never heard of a "Sensory Table" for preschoolers. I imagine that she would have scoffed at the very idea. But her whole house was a Sensory Experience that is probably unlike anything my kids will ever know. Fingers in buttons, yarn, fabric, dough, paste, paper, more buttons and lots lots more yarn. Ropes to pull and an antique telephone to make "ring" in the barn. Wood to carry (it's only fun for the first three trips). Trees to climb. Treasures to find. Pretending to churn butter in the old churn, or separate cream by cranking the separator. And plenty of mess, dust, and dirt. Grandma's Blog would not have a home organization page, I'm thinking, but to a kid it was all just part of the glorious experience of a day at Grandma's.
Having raised 7 children, her blog would have also been able to support a parenting section, if she wanted to digress from all her DIY tutorials. But from what I know about Grandma, I don't think that her advice would sound anything like what I read on popular parenting blogs. Grandma often expressed her disgust at some cautionary advice she had read in a magazine once, so I like to imagine that I know how her first blog post on the subject of parenting would begin: I fed all my babies honey before they were one year old, and it hasn't killed any of them yet.
But what if Grandma really had had a blog? Would she have been too busy working online to read aloud the antics of Mabel in Stories from Grandma's Attic? Would we have gone to her blog to read the story of Grandma and the Goat, rather than watch her tell it again and again complete with sound effects? What if when we had sewed or cooked something there was more concern over getting a great photo shoot than simply enjoying the fruits of our creative labors?
All of the projects and activities that we remember from Grandma's house had a couple things in common: her ordinary everyday love for us and her infectious joy and enthusiasm for life. We did things for the purpose of experiencing them, not so that we could think up clever status updates or have great pictures to comment on later. Life used to be lived and enjoyed right that moment, as we were living it - not in some virtual world after the fact. That's how Grandma was raised. That's how she raised my mom. That's how my mom raised me. And while technology is good, and I want my children to understand how to use and appreciate it's benefits, I don't want to give them any less.
The balance of using technology and involving it my children's lives versus missing out on the important things and experiencing real life is a thin line. But if I'm going to lean too hard to one side or the other, I know which side I want it to be. And I hope I can remember it when I hear that little impressionable three-year-old voice trying to get my attention. I want to always be ready to click the laptop shut and look straight into her eyes when she talks to me. I want to slow down, stop multitasking, and start living . . . one precious moment at a time.
If Grandma had a blog, maybe that's what she would have tried to tell us to do.
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