Episode 45 – Granny Frass’s Golden Rule…

Granny Frass’s Golden Rule: Blood is Thicker Than Bank Accounts.

You know, back in Granny Frass’s day, family wasn’t something you negotiated with. It wasn’t a transaction or a competition. It was a given. You were born into the tribe and that meant you belonged. For better or worse.

Granny Frass didn’t just raise her children, she built futures for them. She split up land, handed out homes, lent what little she had and when she didn’t have it? She somehow found it anyway. Because in her mind, family was family. And while she might have cussed you out for leaving your muddy boots on her clean floor, she’d still turn around and feed you a roast dinner before sending you back out to fix the fence you broke.

She believed in fairness, in looking after your own, in giving everyone a patch of earth to stand on.

But somewhere along the line and you know this part too well – something went sideways in the next generation.

Suddenly, it wasn’t about looking after each other. It was about what you were getting, not what you were giving. Who got the bigger plot. Who had the better house. Who felt they deserved more because of some long-forgotten slight from 1987 involving a burnt pie and a missing garden gnome.

Somewhere, her children lost that virtue.

And by the time it trickled down to my generation, well… let’s just say some of us inherited Granny’s heart and some inherited the knack for conveniently ‘forgetting’ family obligations when money’s on the table.

I often wonder what Granny Frass would say if she saw it now.

I imagine she’d stand at the edge of what used to be her prize vegetable patch – now a parking lot for broken promises – and say:

“I gave you land so you could plant roots, not dig each other’s graves.”

Because that’s who she was. And maybe it’s time a few of us dug up those old virtues she left buried in the garden and replanted them.

Granny Frass – Lesson of the Day:

‘Don’t measure a person by what they’ve been given but by what they’ve grown from it‘.

Some folks inherit land, money or chances… but it’s what they plant with it that tells you who they really are.

Granny Frass always said, ‘A good heart makes better soil than a fat wallet‘.