Grandparents: Part 1

Of my two sets of grandparents, I knew those on my mother’s side the best. This was in part because they were around longer than my father’s parents were and because when we did see them, we got to see them for longer periods of time.

Our most frequent visits took place at the cottage in Maine, during the summer breaks from school. We’d usually be up there for two weeks, wherein I’d get to play Spite and Malice with grandma and do the occasional fishing trip with grandpa. If not there, we’d visit my grandparents at their seaside home in Georgia, and later when they had retired, in Florida.

Before all of this though, my grandparents traveled quite a bit thanks to my grandfather’s work as a pastor. They went from Pennsylvania to New York to Puerto Rico to Tennessee to India to Alexandria to Georgia (U.S.) to California and back again to Georgia. Having been fortunate enough to travel overseas a bit myself, I would have loved to have heard their stories.

They raised four kids (three boys and one girl) over this span, each five years apart, with my mother being the youngest of the group. My grandmother briefly performed with a traveling vaudeville show. They lived near Albert Einstein while my grandfather was a graduate student at Princeton and would often see him about town. My mother shared one of my grandmother’s memories of him:

“She once saw Einstein walking down the street eating an ice cream cone and walking with one foot on the curb and the other in the street and he was obviously enjoying bobbing up and down as he went from the higher curb to the lower street.” Oh, Einstein, you so crazy!

Sadly, both of them passed away before I was mature enough to have obtained an appreciation for my family history, so I only learned of their adventures second-hand through my mother and her older brothers. My grandfather left us in 1998 during my first year in college and I didn’t make it down to the funeral. Four years later my grandmother passed away as well, but not before I had a chance to visit her one last time with my family.

She was in her 90s by then, and was in a lot of pain. She was on medication at the time, but it could only help so much. When the pain got bad enough she would disappear momentarily, as if someone had switched the radio to a different station. I distinctly recall during that last visit when we had a meal at the retirement home dining hall, and she suddenly began playing Spite and Malice with her silverware. It only lasted a moment; she mentioned something about needing more hearts and then she was back, with a quick wink of the eye to assure me she was okay. She was a strong woman and clearly didn’t want anyone to worry about her.

I don’t know for sure when, or if, I’ll have children. While marriage is becoming a more realistic concept for me, children are probably still a long way off. But if there was ever an argument to make for having children sooner rather than later it would be to ensure that they would have a long time to get to know their grandparents. I was fortunate my grandparents were around for as long as they were and it would be a shame if my children weren’t afforded the same luxury.