1. Farrell 1
Kate Farrell
Professor Reimer
Creativity and Caring
April 26th, 2016
Models of Caring (note: both of my grandparents consented to this picture and the
information in the paper below being shared)
Our very first day of class, when the syllabus revealed that we would be writing a
paper about two people in a caring relationship, I knew that I wanted to interview my
maternal grandparents. As I said in Response Paper 7, “They’ve been married for years and
years now, and I’ve always been close to them as individuals and delighted in observing them as
a couple. They are both such lively characters, and when I was little I would often laugh along as
they fit the stereotype of the bickering old married couple. These little spats, though, were
always prompted by their passion and excitement for spending another day with one another.
Their love and appreciation was clear even in moments when they seemed annoyed on the
surface. When they are together, they are energized by one another, and through tough times
they’ve set an example of how to be strong and supportive in the face of darkness. They motivate

2. Farrell 2
me to find love, be compassionate, and be grateful for what you have and never take the people
in your life for granted. They always thank our family for our presence in their lives and for
being there and creating a loving and supportive relationship for one another- whether these
words of thanks come at surprise parties, family dinners, or even just visits for tea, we always
emerge knowing where our strong valuation of family stems from! If I could be half of the
person either of them is, I would consider myself lucky- never mind the power couple they are
together! Since I do respect them so much as individuals and try to model my relationships after
theirs (and that of my parents, which I believe springs from the examples that THEIR parents
set), I am looking forward to getting their insight on how they created and maintain this caring
relationship” (Farrell, RP7).
The questions that I formulated for this project include the following: 1) How did
you meet (grandpa/grandma)? When did you know that you cared for them? 2) What do
you do to show your partner that you care? How does your partner show you that they
care? 3) How has your relationship transformed over time? 4) What do you think has been
the biggest challenge that your relationship has faced and how did you deal with this? 5)
How has your understanding of caring changed over the course of your lives together?
I came up with these questions because I thought they were open-ended enough to
elicit stories- my grandmother tends to remember specific details and expand upon them,
while my grandfather typically communicates in a more concise, but VERY carefully
selected way, so I was interested to see how similar recollections or ways of thinking about
the same event would be expressed, and what that would signal about their caring. This
was definitely clear and helped me understand their relationship through their responses,
so I am happy with the questions that I chose. The first and third questions were the most

3. Farrell 3
open-ended for them to tell stories, so I think in the future I would try to create questions
that are even more open-ended, but I was very interested in the way that the interviews
progressed, and happy with the understanding of their caring relationship that I developed
throughout the evening.
For example, my grandpa recalls their first meeting, “I met your grandma when my
sister was in nurse’s training and she brought a group of girls home and the next day she
said, ‘Which one did you like?’ and I said I liked the dark-haired one so she fixed me up and
that’s how we started,” (Allen Jackson) while my grandmother recalled the same event, “It
was a blind date, his sister and I were in nursing school and we were working in the diet
kitchen and I was kidding around and everything and his sister Florence said ‘you remind
me of my brother I’m going to fix you up’” (Mary Jackson). She goes past the basic
information to expand, “For our first date, we went to the movies… we saw a fall movie and
the song was Shine on Harvest Moon so every time we heard that song it was kind of a
sentimental song for us, in fact I found some potholders that said Shine On Harvest Moon
so every year I take them out in the fall… one of the subsequent dates we saw an Eskimo
movie and they were climbing on the icebergs and all the way home we were pretending
we were Eskimos climbing icebergs (laughs)” (Mary Jackson). Grandma’s details about the
date are much more sentimental, but Grandpa’s gruff voice in his response, “one of the very
first times I went for her- she had a very nice personality, she seemed to be on the ball
laughing and everything, and our first date we got along really good so I could see things
were going well, I wasn’t planning on marrying her at the time, I was 25, we got married
when I was 27” (Allen Jackson) shows that he clearly has fond memories of their first date
as well- they also both thought of examples of their senses of humor (laughing and joking

4. Farrell 4
around/pretending to be Eskimos) in their recollections. My preconceived notion that
caring is largely an interaction between people who appreciate each other’s personalities
and can have fun together was confirmed here- although it is interesting to wonder
whether this notion developed because I was raised with my grandparents (and my
parents, who have a similar fun-loving and appreciative relationship) as models of loving,
caring relationships.
Compatible personalities, even those seen clearly within a short interview, are
definitely not the only factors in the success of this caring relationship. Nodding’s definition
of caring (“involving a relationship between a caring one (A) and the cared for (B) in which
B feels that A has regard for him. B receives from A her readiness to be available and B feels
comfort from her caring. In equal relationships, who is A and who is B can shift back and
forth as needs arise and circumstances change”, as noted in the final paper assignment)
(Reimer, 2016) was helpful in understanding and analyzing my grandparents’ caring
dynamics. Their appreciation of each other and our family is something I’ve always found
inspiring. My grandmother shared, “I feed him, I take care of him, when he’s sick I help take
care of him, I try to keep up a nice house for him, (mimes sexual favors jokingly), he helps
me if I have health problems and he’s always there for me and he sympathizes for me, and
when we were first married he used to buy me flowers all the time but that’s gone by the
wayside (laughs)” (Mary Jackson), while my grandfather says, “she takes care of me 100%,
I’ve been sick and she takes care of me, she has her own ailments and she takes care of
them too, she’s a wonderful girl” (Allen Jackson). His appreciation of her care “serves as a
buffer against stress (in the form of) …perception of impact” (Grant, 166) in her role as a
caretaker.

5. Farrell 5
My grandmother has clearly been stressed and impacted by her husband’s health
challenges, and says that was one of the biggest challenges in their relationship, and that,
“As we get older there are more health issues so we have to roll with the punches so to
speak… that’s how it’s changed, we get more worried every time anything happens because
we’re getting older and it’s harder to cope with things, we just take each day as it comes
and things work out eventually… (but) we’ve been blessed with relatives who have helped
us with rides and we feel very lucky that we have such a nice family” (Mary Jackson). Their
balance of taking care of each other mentally and physically during these health challenges,
as they age, proves that they understand each other’s stress and worries, but do not step
back from challenges- they face them together, head-on. They have both had health issues
and taken care of each other through these issues- recently, my grandfather has been the
one taken care of by my grandmother, but he tries to support her too, saying, “I try to get
along (with her), let her win one or two arguments here and there (to show he cares about
her” (Allen Jackson). He tries to balance out her mental stress due to his physical condition
and the caretaking that she is doing. My grandmother reflects on their interactions, “I kind
of nag him sometimes I think (laughs). Even though I nag him, he stays with me” (Mary
Jackson).
These reflections about the dynamics within their relationship proves that my
grandparents’ caring is intertwined with high emotional intelligence that they employ to
understand each other, their relationship, and to care for one another. This did not surprise
me, as they have both advised me (separately and together) on situations that require
emotional intelligence, which is, “the ability to know another’s feelings and to act in a way

6. Farrell 6
that further shapes those feelings… (and) is the core of the art of handling relationships”
(Goleman, 112).
Their emotional intelligence allows them to handle any potential arguments, of
which there are few serious ones (apart from my grandmother’s self-labeled nagging)- my
grandfather says, “We both know when we’re wrong and we square it away, we’re never
mad at each other for more than a couple of hours” (Allen Jackson), and also says that the
biggest thing he’s learned about caring through this relationship is to, “Listen- more than
anything, straighten out things between you… We’ve always worked together…Being smart
enough to work out (challenges) together- we never really had any arguments about the
kids- grandma knew about kids from working in the hospital, so she knew when they were
sick or when they were faking so they didn’t have to go to school and I tried to help the kids
with sports and stuff so we got along pretty well raising the kids… all turned out to be very
nice kids… (and) we both worked so that really helped” (Allen Jackson). This reflects the
“attunement to others (that) demands a modicum of calm in oneself (in the emotionally
intelligent relationship that Goleman describes in those who are emotionally intelligent),
wherein patience emerges as an alternative to tantrums” (Goleman, 112). They, “come
to…interactions with a well-developed understanding of each other’s inner workings…this
other person truly understands and appreciates you… You can relax in this person’s
presence and let your guard down” (Frederickson, 31), which my grandmother noted,
saying that over time, “We’ve gotten very comfortable with each other” (Mary Jackson) (at
around the same time she spoke of nagging my grandfather, knowing that he will stay).
My grandparents are true models of a loving and caring relationship, in which they
understand, appreciate, and calmly interact with each other. They are balanced in their

7. Farrell 7
caring, switching off the caregiving and cared-for roles whenever possible. They try to
minimize each other’s stressors, and they utilize their emotional intelligence and matching
personality traits to take their lives day by day and appreciate the little things that I have
seen other couples take for granted. Their relationship seems based on a wonderful
connection and friendship, in which they “read others’ wishes, needs, and intentions, forgo
immediate self-interest at appropriate times, negotiate interpersonal boundaries, and
know when (and when not) to forgive” (Hruschka, 121), which reduces the intensity of any
arguments that may otherwise arise in less perceptive and caring relationships.
My grandmother’s account of the moment she knew she was going to marry my
grandfather inspires me and gives me hope to find the sort of love that she and my
grandfather found and have cultivated since then. She sentimentally reflects, “We dated for
a while, I got out of (nurse’s) training, and this other girl and I were going to tour around
the country and work at different hospitals… we were going to start out at Mass General in
Boston and then we were going to go to Chicago and across the country, and while I was at
Mass General I decided I really missed him and I decided that I was going to come home…
after that, it’s history… I cut off the rest of my trip… As soon as I came back from Boston
and I started working locally and we started seeing each other and got serious about each
other, I decided he was the man for me, and I’m glad we did get together, we’ve had a
wonderful life and he’s been a good husband all our lives” (Mary Jackson).
This assignment was a wonderful excuse to create questions and allow me to
interview my grandparents and hear their two sides of their love story, from how it started
to how it is changing now in the face of the problems that arise as they age together, and to
apply pieces of knowledge from the various readings we’ve encountered this semester to

8. Farrell 8
pull together what I know about my grandparents as individuals and as the appreciative
models of love and life that have taught me so much about how to interact with others
while taking care of myself.

9. Farrell 9
Works Cited
Frederickson, Barbara. Love 2.0 How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think,
Do, and Become. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam, 1995. Print.
Grant, Adam M., Elizabeth M. Campbell, Grace Chen, Keenan Cottone, David Lapedis, and
Karen Lee. "Impact and the Art of Motivation Maintenance: The Effects of Contact with
Beneficiaries on Persistence Behavior." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision
Processes 103.1 (2007): 53-67. Web.
Hruschka, Daniel J. "Friendship, Culture, and Ecology." FriendshipDevelopment, Ecology, and
Evolution of a Relationship (2010): 168-93. Web.
Jackson, Mary, and Allen Jackson. "Caring Interview." Personal interview. 23 Apr. 2016.
Noddings, Nel. Caring, a Feminine Approach to Ethics & Moral Education. Berkeley: U of
California, 1984. Print.
Reimer, Joseph. Final Assignment.