What would we do without grandparents?

Grandparents Day has never really caught on big in this country. It seems cloying and commercial and, besides, don't grandparents have a pretty sweet deal all the time? They get to fuss over the grandchildren, show them off to their friends,then send them home to their parents for tooth-brushing, homework-doing and all the other fun-sucking stuff.

But the notion of grandparents simply as playmates and confidantes is long outdated. For 5.7 million American children, grandparents are the primary caregivers, whether they can afford to be or not. More than 900,000 grandparents have had that responsibility for at least five years, according to the U.S. Census.

Nearly a half-million grandparents who care for their grandchildren live below the poverty line. Better than 1.4 million are raising grandchildren and holding down a job as well.

While they might have planned their retirement years quite differently, grandparents step in to support their grandchildren in the most difficult of situations -- a parental death, divorce, abandonment, incarceration, illness, emotional or financial crisis.

They open their homes, gather their energy, postpone their dreams, learn school bus schedules and rebuild their schedules around 'Meet the Teacher' days and band concerts. Whether they know it or not, they are their grandchildren's heroes and deservedly so.

This coming Sunday is as good a day as any to send kind thoughts -- and maybe some flowers -- to Grandma and Grandpa. Whether they're the ones who sign a child up for football and wash his jersey every week, or simply the ones who drop by to cheer him on at a game, they're performing one of life's most important roles.