Our Owen Sound “Grandchildren” Fill Our Lives

Marie and me with our Owen Sound “grandchildren”

A recent study showed that Europeans spend more time with their grandchildren than North Americans and past the age of seventy the grandfather takes the lead while grandmothers are clearly more involved with their grandchildren before age seventy. This could be due to the fact that in North America families are more geographically dispersed.

For us, Marie’s grandchildren live 2000 kms away in Halifax and my daughter has denied me access to my grandchildren in her outrage over my marriage to Marie six years ago. So, neither of us has frequent contact to our biological grandchildren here in Owen Sound.

However, that began to change four years ago when we returned from Florida in May 2019 and found the Singh Family had moved into the house next door. Cara is a single mother with her daughters Mia and Heidi. In the months following our return we came to know our new neighbours well as they spent increasingly more time with us over the summer.

The oldest daughter, Mia, was seven and the youngest, Heidi, had just turned four when they moved next door. The girls quickly filled a void in our Owen Sound lives and it was apparent from the beginning that they would become much more than just the kids next door.

Cara and the girls became regular visitors over that first summer and we shared many mutual enjoyable ventures from outings to the beach to camping at Craigleith.  The later was by far our greatest adventure. Craigleith is about an hour’s drive from Owen Sound. We took three tents, one for Marie and I, one for Cara and Heidi and one that we had set up for the kids to play in during the day. To our surprise Mia chose to spend the night in a tent by herself.  We spent four awesome days exploring the beach and participating in many activities organized by the campground.

The Singh Family from L to R Mia Cara and Heidi	Story Time with Heidi

Since that first summer we have had many more adventures and just like real grandparents we occasionally drive the girls to school or watch them while their mother goes for groceries. On occasion Mia will pop over just to spend some “alone” time with us and recently said something very profound on one of those visits. For some time we have been referring to Mia and Heidi as our, “pretend grandchildren”. When Marie referred to Mia as her “pretend granddaughter” Mia interrupted and quietly said that we no longer needed say that they were “pretend” grandchildren. It was now ok to refer to her as her granddaughter. 😊

Marie & Mia trying to expand the hole my jeans		iPad time with the Singh Girls

An equally touching event occurred with Heidi last year. Her class were crafting personal father’s day cards for their dads. Knowing that Heidi didn’t have a father, the teacher asked Heidi if she had anyone in her life that she thought of as a father or grandfather.  Heidi said, yes, Jim is like my grandfather. So, Heidi made a personal father’s day card and presented it to me on father day – so touching 😊  

Enjoying a hot lunch with Mia	Playing our favorite game of marbles

The photos above are very representative of our lives now with our Owen Sound granddaughters. The photo on the top left captures the moment that Marie and Mia decided that I should not be wearing jeans with a hole in them and kept pulling at it until they totally ripped off the leg of my jeans at knee level. The photos on the bottom are indicative of the many of our granddaughter's visits. The one on the left shows us having lunch with Mia during one of her many times she visits by herself and the one of the right shows a typical Saturday afternoon playing games with the girls.