Book Review: Heavenly Humor for the Grandmother's Soul

Drats. Botheration. Max Lucado has written another book. I have an advance reader's copy on Kindle. My Kindle has been behaving so badly, the Sunday book review for this week has to be another rerun. But at least it's a good book.

Title: Heavenly Humor for the Grandmother’s Soul

Author: Barbour Publishing

Date: 2012

Publisher: Barbour Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-61626-667-7

Length: 224 pages

Quote: “[A] grandmother’s  kitchen goes beyond good aesthetics—it’s like a bakery plus love.”

This trench-coat-pocket-size book is not exactly a devotional, or is it formatted for daily reading for any specific period of time, but its 224 pages contain 75 short, cheery stories about grandmotherhood, each matched with a Bible verse, selected from the work of thirteen living writers. None of the thirteen writers is really a big name; most have written or edited at least one full-length book.

For devotional reading...I’ve reviewed some devotionals that I thought went too far in the direction of unhealthy, Stepford-Wife-like emphasis on (an illusion of) calm at any cost. A daily reading that encourages me to laugh and empathize is definitely more appealing than one that continually tells me “Go back to sleep.” For “daily devotions,” I’d prefer one that called my attention to God or the Bible rather than one that aimed to manipulate my moods, but I do like books that are funny.

Laughing out loud really does reduce physical pain. This physical process can’t be forced. If we’re in too much pain to want to laugh at anything, our bodies may need to get a different sort of biochemical boost from groaning and crying out loud. Either of those behaviors, when it comes naturally and feels right to us, works the diaphragm muscle and prompts the body to produce and release more of a set of chemicals that help relieve pain.

I believe what we as a species will always come back to, as we search for more ways to relieve pain, is that we must not just greedily grab for instant control. Drugs that instantly numb out pain work only on one part of the body for a limited time. If we try to use them beyond that natural limit, they begin to do more harm than good, become addictive, damage our brains. Letting ourselves laugh out loud at funny stories promotes healing in several different, subtle ways. Trying to force ourselves to laugh might activate other biochemical processes that sabotage the subtle, but measurable, benefits of laughing. So #ChooseLaughter when it works for you; don’t try to force it on yourself, and never even think about forcing it on others.

Meanwhile...I’ve laughed louder and longer than I did while reading Heavenly Humor for the Grandmother’s Soul, but I did laugh. These are fresh, funny short stories, all plausible as true.

In some case, a plus point may or may not be an author’s decision to go for credibility rather than comicality. On pages 22-23, Anita Higman says, “I pray my mouth wasn’t covered with jam as I buried my cheeks in that fur” (piece the grandmother wore when “dressed up”), then goes on to say, “thank You, God, for Your gentleness of spirit when we deliberately smear our jam-covered faces into Your goodness.”

First of all let’s pass lightly over the fact that Higman’s grandmother would undoubtedly have worn the elaborately processed but still slowly decomposing fur of some dirty little animal who wasn’t ready to part with its own coat when it was killed for it.Today the “fur” we wear is made of nice clean acrylic thread, and it smells clean, doesn’t harbor colonies of insects in summer storage, involved no harm to any potential pets, and is not considered particularly valuable or elegant. In remaking this story we’d want to update that bit too.

“Hearing Grannie’s beloved foosteps, little Annie dropped that sloppy jam sandwich carelessly. It slipped off the edge of the plate, slid down the tablecloth in a sticky trail, and plopped onto the floor, while Annie raced to the door and shoved her jammy little front side into Grannie’s brand new white cashmere coat that she’d been waiting for Grandpa to buy for her for their fortieth anniversary last week...and Grannie’s voice hissed and crackled indignantly in a burst of Latvian, all her hard learned English deserting her. Then she gently turned Annie around and steered her toward the kitchen, saying in Latvian, ‘Now, my darling grandchild, we see whether you can clean up some part of this mess’...”

But that’s not the story Higman tells.

Fortunately other stories are told in what sounds like their entirety. Kathy Douglas reports on a grandmother, not her own, by starting a second career as a newspaper columnist, writing about being 100 years old. “At age 102, she shooed her interviewer out...‘I’m on a deadline.’”

Then there are the grandparents, Lucy and Larry Names-Withheld, who tried skiing on a chair. “It was fun unil the skis hit bare rock...the snow made for a soft landing.”

Then there’s the grandmother who separated a toddler from a lot of expensive medical equipment, telling the child that the hearing aid and its battery are Grandma’s ears, dentures are her teeth, glasses are her eyes... “So you think that’s funny? Just you wait until you have a bunch of spare parts!”

About thirty years ago Ozarque wrote a nonfiction guidebook called The Grandmother Principles. She was dismayed, on the book tour, to meet many middle-aged women more interested in looking too young to be grandmothers than in enjoying being grandmothers. I only wish it were still possible to get her opinion of this book.

I’m not a grandmother and never will be, and what I can say about this book for grandmothers is: If you’re starting to say unhappily, “It’s not for me. I’m not yet, or no longer, or no longer even able to look forward to being, a grandmother,” stop right there. If you’re over forty, you like children, and you’re not a grandmother, obviously nature intended you to be an aunt (or uncle) instead. Grandmothers may be entitled to a special degree of “grandness” because many of them have mad e a double investment of time and effort in nururing their grandchildren, but being an aunt (or uncle) is a grand thing too. Enjoy these stories. And enjoy your nieces and nephews.