Last December I finally decided to add a strength-building routine to my fitness schedule. I’ve been practicing yoga for 20 years and also walk four times a week, but I’ve never been able to maintain the discipline of weight training—until I met Patty McLucas.

Patty is co-founder of Breathing Room wellness center in San Mateo and a personal trainer who works with people in their home. She came to my home and we went for a brisk walk. While we were walking, she asked me about my fitness goals. By the time we got home she had developed a personalized program for me. She demonstrated eight strength-building exercises and then watched me practice them. I committed to doing them twice a week and began to enjoy this new discipline. My upper body felt stronger and I could see improvement in my arm strength.

In March we met again and Patty added some new exercises. When I told Patty that I like to get down on the floor and play with my two granddaughters, she suggested some fun strength-building exercises to do with them. Most kids pursue strength-building activities on their own—swinging on the monkey bars, bicycling, jumping, and swinging. However, there are additional activities that grandparents can do with them to help strengthen the core of their bodies.

Jumping Jacks
You remember these! If you demo one or two, your grandchild will pick them up quickly. If it feels like a stretch for you to get the proper rhythm after all these years, take it a step at a time: begin with arms straight and pointing toward the ceiling overhead, legs together. Then hop into an ‘X,’ then hop back into starting position. That’s all there is to it. Your grandchild may be doing 5 to your 1, and that’s fine! Remind both of you to keep your bellies pulled in tight.

Wheelbarrows
Have your grandchild lie on the floor on her tummy, then raise her torso by placing straight arms on the floor, palms down. Now, by bending your knees, squat down and grasp the child’s ankles in your hands, raising the rest of the child’s body until it’s parallel with the floor. Your grandchild has now become ‘a wheelbarrow!’ Have them walk forward by ‘stepping’ with their hands as you follow along, still holding the ankles. (Be sure to bend your knees as you follow to protect your back.) Your grandchild may not be able to do this for very long in the beginning (and you both may be laughing hard enough to add to the difficulty!) but if you continue to practice, the length of time the child is in the air will increase. Encourage him or her to pull the belly in.

Mountain Climbers
Place two chairs with the backs against a wall for stability. Each of you face a chair, bend forward, grasp the seat of the chair with both hands. Step the feet back until the body is at a slant with the weight supported on the hands and toes. Now, keeping the hands on the chair and by hopping and stepping feet forward and back alternately, you are ‘climbing a mountain.’ This is another exercise where the grandchild may be climbing Mt. Everest with gusto while the grandparent is strolling uphill, but it’s all good exercise, both for the cardiovascular system and the core muscles (keep those bellies pulled in!). Count to 20 steps to start and build from there.

Rolling Like a Ball
These are silly, but have a surprisingly beneficial effect on the abdominal muscles. Sit with your grandchild on the floor with your knees bent and hugged close to the chest with the arms wrapped around them. Allow yourself to roll backward onto your back (not your neck or head! do not use your head as a bumper!) and then roll back up. Sometimes you don’t make it all the way and have to roll back up again (this is where the giggling starts). Each time you roll forward you will feel the abdominal muscles engage.

Whatever you do, Patty advises, always begin slowly and pay attention to how your body is feeling to prevent injury. While some of these activities will feel hard when you begin, keep going. You will be gifting yourselves and your grandchildren with the development of a strong core, increased cardiovascular capability, and best of all, shared time together having fun.

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It’s all there—every thought, feeling, or reaction you’ve ever had about being a grandmother Eye of My Heart, a new compilation of stories by 27 grandmothers, and it will get you thinking about your role as a grandma.

Barbara Graham edited the collection, which is subtitled: 27 writers reveal the hidden pleasures and perils of being a grandmother. As a new grandmother, Graham realized even before her granddaughter came home from the hospital, that being a grandma was more complicated than she’d imagined. But being the first among her friends to become one, she turned to books for wisdom. Not finding any “real” stories that revealed both “cracks and wonder,” she asked writers she knew to share their stories and Eye of My Heart was born.

I’ve read more than two-dozen books on grandparenting and nothing compares to this collection. It’s the most honest and deeply profound exploration of grandmotherhood I’ve ever read. I savored every story and often stopped to ponder thought-provoking lines that deeply resonated with me.

After finishing the book, I felt as if 27 new friends had just bared their souls to me, each giving deep thought to their role as a grandmother. I scrawled marks and notes on almost every page as I reacted to the familiar emotions that these articulate writers shared about becoming grandmothers: their role models, their relationships with the parents of their grandchildren, and what they hoped to pass on to their grandchildren. They explored and examined their deepest feelings about the bond they have with their grandchildren, and boldly wrote about aging.

Some were laugh-out-loud stories, like Judith Viorst’s on competing with the other grandma and Judith Guest’s hilarious road trip with her three granddaughters. Some were heartbreaking: Sallie Tisdale wrote a sad tale of too many grandchildren in a broken family and Marcie Fitzgerald (a pseudonym) is now her grandson’s parent because her bipolar daughter is unable to care for him. Others were sweet and touching: At sixty Virginia Ironside finally gave up her search for Mr. Right and discovered what she truly wanted: to be a granny. Letty Cottin Pogrebin wrote of her obsession with creating lifelong memories for her six grandchildren because she has so few memories of her own.

These are fascinating, entertaining, revealing and boldly told tales from the ‘hood—grandmotherhood.

Barbara Graham, Susan Griffin and Bharati Mukherjee will be speaking at Kepler’s books in Menlo Park, CA on May 3 at 2 pm.

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Oné of the best ways to pass on your family heritage to your grandchildren is to cook with them. I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandma when I was growing up, but surprisingly, we never cooked together. She was a great cook and did pass down all her recipes to me, handwritten on  3 x 5 index cards.

I’ve made a point of being “the grandma we cook with” when I get together with my granddaughters. My six-year old granddaughter, Juliet, came to visit a few days before Passover. We made charoset together. There are more varieties of charoset recipes than any other Jewish recipe. Charoset is my favorite symbolic Passover food on the Seder plate. A mixture of apples, nuts, wine, cinnamon, and honey, charoset symbolizes the mortar that the Hebrew slaves used to make bricks in ancient Egypt.

I showed Juliet the recipe card in my grandma Amelia’s careful handwriting—a bit yellowed and stained from all the years I’ve used it—but still legible. It brought back memories of the delicious, sweet, jam-like mixture my grandma Amelia prepared for our large family seders. We could hardly wait to get to the part of the Passover story when we spread a large dollop of charoset on matzo and savored the sweet crunchiness of the two symbolic foods.

I thought it would be fun to make charoset because it’s such a tactile way to pass on both family and Jewish traditions. I got out my grandma’s vintage meat grinder and rigged it onto the kitchen counter. Juliet started turning the crank before we’d even gotten out the ingredients. As we poured handfuls of raisins, almonds, and apple slices into the bowl of the grinder, the crank became harder to turn. We could have made the whole thing in the Cuisinart, but doing it the way my grandma did made me feel like she was right there in the kitchen watching us work together. Of course, we had to snitch a bite every few minutes to make sure it tasted good. I could just hear my grandma saying: “You’re a nibbler from Nibblerville!”

This year at our family seder Juliet had a proud look on her face as she served her great-great grandma’s charoset. I thought it tasted just like my grandma’s.

Do you have a family recipe to pass on to your grandchildren that would share your family heritage?

My Grandma’s Recipe for Charoset
2 lbs seedless raisins
¼ lb shelled almonds
handful of hazel nuts
4 large tart apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbs wine, grape juice, or lemon juice
Grind the mixture together using small grinder holes.
Serves 20 people

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On Sunday, May 3, 2009 Adair Lara will be the guest speaker at our GaGa Sisterhood meeting in San Francisco. I’ve been looking forward to meeting Adair since I read The Granny Diaries last December.  Adair has a fabulous sense of humor and a great ear for dialogue. Her wry irreverence captured so many of my own experiences — especially her perspective as the maternal grandmother. Her observations are thoughtful, poignant and humorous. She shares her own feelings with such honesty you’ll want to finish her book in one sitting.

Adair honed her humor at the SF Chronicle, where she wrote a twice-weekly column for 12 years. She’s also published ten books and currently teaches classes on writing essays, humor and memoir in her San Francisco Victorian home.

All grandmothers are welcome to attend this meeting from 2 to 4 pm. We’ll be meeting at the home of one of our members. For more information and details of the location, please send an email to: donnedavis@gagasisterhood.com

The GaGa Sisterhood is a social network for energetic, enthusiastic, caring grandmothers who:

• Indulge in the joy of being grandmas.
• Share creative ways to connect with our grandchildren.
• Explore what it means to be a grandma today.

We’ve been meeting for six years in the San Francisco Bay Area to share our wisdom and resources in ways that enrich our family life.

The Granny Diaries will be available for sale at this meeting. Bring a check for $12.95 or cash if you’d like to purchase a signed copy.

We’ll have a chance to learn more about how Adair’s book evolved and share some of our own feelings about being a grandma today.

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