Live & Learn / Learn & Live

Grandpa Jenson – A Fork at The Table
1957-1960

My grandfather, we’ll call him Grandpa Jenson or GJ for short was a faithful husband, a father in his home and the main provider for his household. Arthur Leroy Jenson, from whom I received my first name, served as a postal service worker in Oakland, CA, after moving down from Pasco, Washington in the late 1940’s to buy a home and find work in a post WWII era. It was there that he raised his two daughters. My aunt, Thelma, and his eldest, our mom, Marjorie. Grandpa never had a son. Perhaps that’s why he was so, shall we say, intentional in his attempts to discipline my brother and I when we were very young.

My childhood years in Oakland with GJ are a blur. As I recall we moved nine times within the first 6 years of my elementary schooling. If you think that is a lot you would be right. His daughter, our mom, had become a single mom early. Raising two boys, she did her very best at keeping us in line. But we needed a man’s presence in our lives and GJ was up to bat much of the time. At one point in these many moves we lived in a place called the Projects. The “Projects” were a low-income group of apartments sitting off East 14th Street at Heaven’s Court Boulevard. It was walking distance to grandpa’s house in those days when it was still relatively safe to walk that area. I recall many fond memories at our grandparents’ home. Birthday’s, holidays, and Christmas Eve were often celebrated there. That meant many meals at the table. More about that later. As I mentioned, our mom was a single mom from the time she had a three-year-old and a newborn and was either working or looking for work. That situation required the help of our grandparents. In the early 1950’s this was not so much the norm.

As I write this memoir, I too am a father and grandfather! I too have experienced the joy and challenge of a daughter’s need to “move back in with mom and dad!” The reasons for any one of my daughter’s temporarily returning home were most simply due to difficult life circumstances. The point here is that when they returned, they came back with children! Those children were our precious grandchildren at very young ages.

Having experienced it I can instantly relate to Grandpa Jenson. There you are, your adult daughter with her own living habits, now a single mom with children and her own ways of dealing with them, squeezed into your living quarters to share all things! It takes the grace of God for it to go well and for us it went very well. But it was always clear that this mom, our daughter, could benefit from help with children. What mom doesn’t, single or not? So, as a father and a grandfather you step in. When you see a child, your grandchild may I remind us, needing correction you correct. When you see that child needing teaching or direction, you teach and direct. And when you see that child needing discipline for wrong choices made, it’s time to apply it!

After all, isn’t that what our Heavenly Father does? He will use His word to do these same things in our lives if we’ll let Him. Paul tells his son in the faith, Timothy that: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness…”. (2 Tim.3:16). Do you see it? Teaching, instruction and correction and discipline!

So back to Grandpa Jenson. There we were at the dinner table one night in our grandparents’ home. A lovely table setting, and meal served. Grandma always seemed to set the table nice for dinner. Grandpa was one for making sure children, especially two rowdy boys, understood proper table manners. Hands where they should be, please and thank you and eat what is on your plate without complaining. It may sound old school, I know, but it’s still so needed today. We, my brother, and I had been corrected and instructed in these things many times before this night. But on this night, something special took place!

The adults were eating, and this child started to play with his food without an eating utensil in his hand. All the sudden GJ’s hand reached across the table and with one loving, gentle but firm, smack with his fork on my hand taught me what I should and should not be doing while at his table. I was very young and don’t remember the exact circumstances, but I’ll tell you this. I’ve never forgotten my table manners since. I’ve also grown to appreciate and respect what Grandpa Jenson was trying to do that night more so now than ever.


Who is it that God may be using to teach you today? Who is it in your life path that perhaps God wants you to step in and offer some direction or instructions too? Take some time to think about it and ask God what HE might have you to do.