100 Things Every Grandparent Can Pass Down

Start with the shoebox in the closet. The one stuffed with photographs nobody has ever labeled. Take two hours, a soft pencil, and write on the back of each print: who, where, roughly what year. Press lightly. Do it while you still know.

That's the whole job, really. You're the last person alive who can identify half of those faces, and when you go, they become strangers in a box somebody's grandkid throws out in 2061.

The good news is that grandparents have an unfair advantage. Your own kids argued with you. Your grandkids think you're interesting. Use it.

Things with your fingerprints on them

1. Labeled photographs. See above. Pencil, not pen.
2. The family Bible, with births and deaths written in the front in three different hands.
3. Your wedding ring, eventually, and the story of the day you paid for it.
4. A pocketknife. Teach them to sharpen it before you hand it over.
5. The cast iron skillet. Black, seasoned, and never, ever soaked overnight.
6. Your father's tools, initials still stamped in the handles.
7. A quilt, plus the names of the dresses the squares were cut from.
8. The good watch. Wind it in front of them first.
9. One thing you built or refinished yourself, flaws and all.
10. A recipe card in your own handwriting. Typed doesn't count.

Stories only you have

1. What your own grandparents looked like, sounded like, and smelled like.
2. Where the family came from, and what they gave up to get here.
3. The job you hated, and what three years of it taught you.
4. The worst thing you did as a kid, and exactly what happened next.
5. How you met their grandmother. The full version, including the nervous part.
6. What you earned an hour at twenty, and what a tank of gas cost.
7. The prayer your mother prayed over you.
8. Where you were standing the day the whole country stopped.
9. The friend you lost, and why you still say his name out loud.
10. Your voice on a recording. Ten minutes on a phone, one story, start to finish.

Faith, handed over

1. The Lord's Prayer, memorized, so it's there at 3 a.m. when they're frightened.
2. Psalm 23. Same reason.
3. How to find a verse in an actual Bible without a search bar.
4. A grace they can say out loud at a table of adults without going red.
5. That you pray for them by name. Tell them so.
6. The hymn you want sung at your funeral. Teach them the tune now, not then.
7. The verse you leaned on the year everything came apart.
8. Church as the shape of a week, not as leverage.
9. How to sit with a grieving person and say nothing useful for an hour.
10. Forgiveness, demonstrated, in a family where somebody had to go first.

Skills worth one afternoon

1. Tie a bowline. Then hang your weight on it.
2. Sharpen a knife on a stone until it cuts newspaper cleanly.
3. Build a fire with one match and no lighter fluid.
4. Back up a trailer. Hand at the bottom of the wheel.
5. Read a paper map, and fold it back the way it came.
6. Change a tire in the rain, in the dark, before the night they need it.
7. Cast a closed-face reel without turning the line into a bird's nest.
8. Clean a fish.
9. Shuffle, deal, and play a hand of gin rummy for pennies.
10. Whistle with two fingers, loud enough to be heard across a parking lot.
11. Plant a tree they'll sit under after you're gone.
12. Name five birds and three trees on your own street.

In the kitchen

1. Biscuits from scratch, by feel, not by scale.
2. The gravy. Nobody ever writes down the gravy.
3. Break down a whole chicken, then make stock out of what's left.
4. Pie crust. Cold butter, cold hands, don't work it.
5. A pot of beans and a pan of cornbread that feeds nine people for the price of a pizza.
6. Canning, including a healthy respect for what happens when you do it wrong.
7. How to set a table properly, knife edge turned in.
8. Coffee that isn't an insult.
9. What to carry to a family the week after a funeral, in a dish you don't want back.
10. Washing up as the second half of the meal, not a punishment.

Money, plainly

1. What you made your first full year, and what it actually bought.
2. Why you don't borrow money for something that's worth less every month.
3. Compound interest worked out on paper with a pen, so they see the curve bend.
4. Go with them to open a savings account. Ten dollars starts it.
5. Pay them for work. Never for existing.
6. The honest number on what your worst financial decision cost you.
7. Tip well, in cash, and let them watch you do it.
8. Give money away in front of them without announcing the amount.
9. The difference between being broke and being poor.
10. How to read a pay stub, line by line, including the part that disappears.

Manners that still work

1. Stand up when someone walks into the room.
2. Shake a hand, say your own name first.
3. Write the thank-you note inside a week. Four sentences, by hand.
4. Hold a door without turning it into a statement.
5. Sir and ma'am until you're told otherwise.
6. Hat off indoors and during the anthem.
7. Call. Don't text. Especially on a birthday.
8. Show up early. Leave before the host gets tired.
9. Never arrive empty-handed. Bring something, even if it's ice.
10. Look people in the eye when they're talking, phone face down on the table.

What a long marriage teaches

1. Never say the true cruel thing. You can't put it back in your mouth.
2. Fight about the actual problem, at the actual time.
3. Separate checking accounts are fine. Separate secrets aren't.
4. Somebody has to apologize first. It might as well be you, and it's cheaper early.
5. A wife needs to hear it out loud. Repeatedly. For fifty years.
6. Let them see a 78-year-old man still opening the car door.
7. The truth about the year the two of you nearly didn't make it.
8. Dance in the kitchen where the grandkids can see it.
9. Marriage is a covenant, not a subscription you cancel when the service dips.
10. Bury a spouse well, then let them watch you keep living.

Keep it, fix it, make do

1. Patch drywall, sand it, and match the texture.
2. Sew a button, hem a pant leg, iron a shirt including the collar.
3. Shine a pair of shoes with brush, polish and cloth.
4. Change the oil once, so they know what they're paying a shop to do.
5. Sharpen the mower blade, swap the plug, drain the gas before winter.
6. Know when the job calls for WD-40 and when it calls for grease.
7. Keep a garden, even if it's four tomato plants in five-gallon buckets.
8. Save the receipt, the box and the manual.
9. Take it apart before you throw it away. You already own it.
10. How to wait. Sanding a table, smoking a brisket, waiting on a fig tree.

The things only you can give

1. Show up. Ball game, band concert, hospital room, courtroom.
2. The nickname nobody else is allowed to use.
3. Tell them which parent they take after, and make it a compliment.
4. Say what you see in them out loud, before anybody else notices it.
5. Praise their mother and father in front of them. Kids need their parents built up.
6. Keep quiet about parenting decisions that aren't yours to make. This is the hard one.
7. Write the letter for their wedding day now. Give it to their mom to hold.
8. The blessing. Hand on the head, their name spoken, said out loud so they hear it.

Number 100 is free and takes eleven seconds, and most men die without ever having done it once.

The shoebox isn't getting any younger either.