Alain Michaud largeur100

The Holiday season is not only a fairy and festive period, it is also a moment full of meaning. Especially, as president of a family association, it makes me think twice of the importance of the family.

First, this Christmas beautifully enlightened, reminds us the Nativity. Moreover, this first day of the year many resolutions are unceasingly taken is a sing of the good will of people. Finding more time for oneself, our friends and family figures often as the main priorities.

Knowing the general profile of the members of our family association, you are possibly grandparents like me, and even great-grandparents. You are undoubtedly aware that this time of meetings with our grandchildren during the season’s holiday is enjoyable for us but as well is very important for them. How and why?

Though modern families are differently structured, they share as a foundation, the crucial feeling of love and belonging. Right from the birth of our descendants, we grant them an unconditional love that will stand the test of time. With our attentive and kindly glance, we appreciate watching them “growing up”, in every sense of the word, and we help them in their development.

In addition to play an emotional role, grandpa and grandma create opportunities to learn with joy, through plays, daily and outside activities.

As grandparents, we are hoping to embody values of stability and perseverance to our grandchildren, knowing that it represents a stable anchor, a kind of balance in a family environment that sometimes could be chaotic.

But we know as well how to transgress rules in cherishing our grandchildren. With us, it is often the ball. Laughter is never too far. Young children have special authorizations that would not be allowed from their mom and dad. However, it is not always necessary to remind them this complicity and this privileged relationship that they enjoyed as well.

These moments of fantasy and freedom are pure happiness for the grandparents who are willing to work miracles to see their grandchildren little eyes sparkling with joy. As they get older, they look for our advices, sometimes even solicitating our presumed wisdom.

“The family” is also the bounding that contributes as a person to engrain ourselves in something much greater than us, but who went before us just like the members of Michaud Family Association who, for the most of them, have the same ancestor who immigrated from France: Pierre Micheau who was born in 1637 in Fontenay-le-Comte and who arrived in Quebec at the beginning of the summer of 1656.

I wish you a good time with your family, and thank you for continuing of being part of ours.

 

Alain Michaud (1480), president