About a month ago, I went home for my two-week vacation with my family. This was supposed to be my break from the Daily, from classes and my social life. As I drove home I couldn’t wait for my vacation of nothing. For the next two weeks, my days were to be filled with sleeping long hours and home cooking every night. I could almost smell the pork chops and potatoes baking in the oven as I headed north on I-35.

But after a few days of enjoying the truly lazy days of summer, my grandparents called with other plans for my summer holiday. They had rows and rows of white and yellow sweet corn on their mind.

Now for those of you who have never had the joy of freezing sweet corn, let me give you some basic instructions.

First you arrive at Grandpa’s shed, where it is always hot. This shed is filled with tons of stuff, most of which you have no idea where it came from or what it does. Don’t dare ask any questions. Don’t dare move anything. Grandpa has every piece of what looks like a worthless piece of machinery mapped out in his brain.

After you move the antique junk, grandpa drives his Ford pickup truck piled high with sweet corn into the shed. Your eyes look in amazement. Who could eat this much sweet corn?

This is a trademark of Catholic families. Since my grandparents grew up in these large families (a minimum of 16 children), they remember the days when the whole family would help freeze sweet corn. This would be about 92 cousins, 36 aunts and uncles and various other distant relatives.

My grandparents forget that the ones that are fooled into helping anymore are me and my 13-year-old sister who couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough. My other sister is 17, so she’s a pro at getting out of working with my family.

Then you have the assembly line of jobs. Historians have given Henry Ford credit for inventing the assembly line. Not true. Grandparents can organize grandchildren to do a job faster than anyone else, and sweet corn harvesting is no exception.

Throughout this whole process of sweet corn freezing, my sister and I swapped stories with my grandparents. We heard stories about when they froze sweet corn with their children while the local country radio plays in the background. They tell us about our relatives that we’ve never met. And family traditions are passed down, such as the family secrets of freezing sweet corn.

When all was said and done at the end of the day, I felt good despite the fact that I had this strange stickiness on my hands and kernels of corn in my hair.

After a day of talking about the local town gossip and updating my grandparents on life as a college student, I realized I was very lucky. I was lucky because I was able to hang out with my grandparents for a whole day.

And there’s no time like the present to hang out with your grandparents.

On Sunday, the U.S. celebrated National Grandparents Day, or at least the calendar said we celebrated it.

I’m wondering how many students called or e-mailed their grandparents on this day.

I doubt anyone even realized that it was the day set aside for grandparents. I’m sure most people don’t know that Grandparents Day was started in 1978 by former President Jimmy Carter.

But why do we need another Hallmark holiday to remember the older people in our lives? Can’t every day be Grandparents Day? And those of you who don’t have living grandparent, why don’t you adopt one?

Some people think they are too busy for their grandparents.

We are all busy. We are caught up in our lives, school and with work. And all of that seems really important right now, but what about when your children ask about your grandparents? Don’t you want to be able to tell them about the kind of flowers your grandmother planted? Or the way your grandpa always cheated at cards so he could be the Hearts champion of the nursing home?

Those are the things you remember. Those are the things that count.

I’ll remember my sweet corn adventure for years to come, after I’m done eating the boxes of sweet corn currently frozen in my apartment.

That’s what Grandparents Day is all about.

Michelle Kann is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Garnavillo. She is the newsroom managing editor.