Don’t forget to honor grandmothers this Mother’s Day

George Washington once said, “All that I am, I owe to my mother.”

It’s true that we all owe a great deal of who we are to our upbringing, and in particular to the values instilled in us by our mothers, which is why Mother’s Day is such an important holiday.

It is perhaps even more important, then, to remember our grandmothers on this day, and to be grateful to them for having given our parents the values they passed on to us and for teaching us a thing or two directly.

If it’s a parent’s job to discipline their children, then it’s a grandparent’s job to spoil the grandkids and impart some conventional wisdom along the way. At least, that’s what my grandmother tells me.

Think back on the big lessons you learned growing up. Sure, a lot of the important ones, the basics, came from mom and dad – be honest, work hard, eat your vegetables – but if you had a lot of interaction with your grandparents growing up, they probably expanded upon those lessons with their extra experience and reinforced them with old stories. Especially

that lesson about hard work.My paternal grandmother is a member of the Greatest Generation. There’s a reason that as a society, we seem to respect and idolize them to such a high degree.

I can’t imagine what life was like for her growing up in a working class immigrant family during the Great Depression, and then working and worrying as my grandfather shipped off in the Navy in World War II.The hard life experiences she gained became valuable teaching tools for her to use on my cousins, my sister and me growing up. I appreciate immensely the hard work my mom put into raising my sister and me and the way she helped shape our perspectives.

But Mom-mom’s stories of pitching in to help with the family grocery store, learning how to do without some niceties in order to afford the necessities and even the secrets to maintaining a happy marriage for more than 65 years really drove home the importance of what I was learning.

My maternal grandmother grew up in the 1950s and also learned to live without a lot of material possessions and to work hard to earn a living. Her lessons have included enjoying the simpler things in life, reserving your judgments of others and the true meaning of unconditional love.

In a society where the divorce rate has been now famously documented at around 50 percent, it is awe-inspiring to think that these women and their husbands have been able to remain happily married for more than half a century. But these women taught me that all a strong loving relationship takes is a little bit of work, communication and patience.Coming out of college into a poor economy with a bleak job market, it was difficult for me to imagine how these women managed to get through their own financial hardships. But these women also taught me never to give up on getting ahead in life.