I have shared stories about my grandfather, and the words come, soft and easy.
This New England grandfather of mine loved well, through clear, deliberate action. He understood that grandchildren were gifts from God, and it was his chief aim, duty, and delight to make certain my brother and I knew it.
In a dimly lit, passive world that flips and flops, flagrantly averse toward relational commitment, my grandfather burned brightly. He noted our preferences, listened to our thoughts, and treated us to Italian fare–bubbly lasagna, bright Romaine sprinkled with fresh Parmesan, and a napkin-laced basket of crusty garlic bread. Other evenings it was magnificent Maine lobster and hot clam chowder dotted with oyster crackers, served alongside soft yeast rolls. For dessert we skipped inside Brigham’s for a cone, and as the tiny bell jingled overhead, Grandpa invited us to choose three whole scoops of ice cream.
He paid for cottages along the shores of Cape Cod, gifting us sunny weeks of beach vacations—salty hair and sandy toes, suntans and shenanigans—with plenty of family stories and drama. In fact, when the women began to bicker, Grandpa sent us off to the candy store down the lane, with a crisp dollar bill in hand.
I can still taste those magnificent meals and feel the ocean breeze from the cottage’s steep back porch overlooking the ocean marshes. Only now do I imagine what such love must have cost him: time, money, longer hours at the office, and personal comfort in his ageing years. Did he pummel us with reminders of the expense? Did he needle his family about the restaurant bill, or sigh at the rising cost of beach rentals?
Never. It was his deepest pleasure to express his love.
On ordinary days he cruised around town in his Volvo; my brother and I in tow, taking us to the dump, the dry cleaner, the pharmacy, and the hardware store. What I remember most of all is his happy heart, as he crooned along with old cassette tapes: Andraé Crouch’s To God Be the Glory, and Bill Gaither’s Because He Lives which elicited tears that trickled down his face. He was never embarrassed by such emotion.
God is wonderful and he rescued me, he said.
Grandchildren notice everything, and to have a grandparent who demonstrates their heart’s affections?
Pure gold.
To grandparent with eternity in mind is to forget all about yourself and go serve your darlings, choosing to spend the rest of your life showing them just how much you care. This is a love that cuts no corners, but lives to serve with outstretched arms.
Grandparenting well is both a light and weighty endeavor, a call to die, and an invitation to live with purpose.
But what about all those hard stories that are painful to tell? When grandparents do not rise to embrace their biblical role?
Pain, as I have discovered, has the potential to be a powerful tutor. The wise will heed the poor decisions of others and choose the better way.
I am now a grandmother, a fifty-four-year-old who remembers the ache.
***
My earliest memories of my father’s mother are swept up in mystery and longing.
Flo, as she was called, even by her sons, was German, stoic, and stubborn.
She and Grandpa lived 1000 miles away and visited our family once and only once.
Out East, she called it, in her heavy Chicago accent.
I was small when she and Grandpa visited and felt a shiver of excitement as I waited for them to arrive, my nose pressed against the windowpane.
They looked uncomfortable that first night, seated on our striped sofa that doubled as a hide-a-bed. Smoking was prohibited in our apartment, and I could feel the discomfort as Grandpa smiled and absentmindedly patted his shirt pocket. As night encroached and the tree frogs sang, my father cleared his throat and stood, tugged the triad of cushions from the sofa, and heaved the heavy bed frame across our olive shag carpet.
While my mother tucked soft sheets around the thin mattress, I wandered over to our fish tank, which glowed and bubbled. A school of neon tetras and zebra fish darted as I pointed and introduced my grandparents to Chubby, my favorite fish of all, a stout zebra fish twice the size of the others.
Grandpa nodded, soft eyes distant.
Well, he said, more than once, while Flo toyed with her purse handles and asked where she should ready herself for bed.
***
In lieu of their future refusal to travel Out East, my parents packed up our family many a summer, stuffed our suitcases into our small vehicle, and drove from New England to the Midwest and back again. Our car lacked air conditioning, and this, paired with my unrelenting carsickness, made for one long journey, windows down, wind whipping.
After two days, we arrived, and I felt a thrill zip down my spine as I studied their Sears & Roebuck house. Just imagine…my tall father had once been my age right here on this street–riding bikes, playing tag, and romping with cousins during steamy summer cookouts.
My brother and I unbuckled our seat belts, peeled our sweaty legs from the vinyl seats, and pranced behind our parents through the squeaky back screen door, which banged. I counted the steps up, up, up into my grandparents’ kitchen.
Grandpa pushed his cigarette stub into the yellow ashtray and smiled as he stood, gentle and slow.
Oh golly! he said pleasantly as he stretched his legs, patted our shoulders, and shook my father’s hand.
Hello, Tommy and Kristin, said Flo, with a fluttery wave.
She did not scoot down to hug us, or offer a drink of lemonade, or tug open a cookie jar. I stared longingly at the refrigerator, hoping she might offer something now that my carsickness had abated, but she did not.
The fridge, in fact, was speckled with photos of my uncle’s cats. I wondered where our school pictures were.
With hellos swept out of the way, my brother and I were shooed outdoors to play with our cousins.
During our week-long visits so many summers ago, I cannot recollect one personal conversation with Flo, no questions about school or hobbies or friends, nor any delicious snacks. We ate German sausage, hamburgers, coleslaw, and potato salad, and the adults downed endless pots of coffee. I watched Flo’s face, her smile lovely and guarded as she spoke to the adults, and I longed to know this grandmother of mine who felt unreachable.
***
Flo tended her flower gardens with precision, kneeling, patting, weeding, watering, forever hovering over Day Lilies and Hostas. The garden might have been small, but it was a beauty, and one she nurtured. I noticed her admiring her labor one summer evening, her back to the house, as the sun began to dip. She seemed lost in the beauty, with knuckles rested on her hips, the same mannerism my father displayed after an afternoon of gardening, dirt-laced garden gloves dangling between thumb and index finger.
Flo’s garden skirted their garage, the garage that held not only Grandpa’s woodworking table, but Grandma’s prized possession: her 1972 Oldsmobile Delta 88, Matador Red.
Heaven help anyone who touched it.
***
Grandma’s nurturing of plants and automobiles did not extend to people.
One of the repeated stories of my childhood was her response to my black eye. At the age of two, I tumbled down the wooden staircase of our apartment, which left me with a shiner. My father relayed this story to his folks during a long-distance phone call.
Flo’s response?
Get used to it. It is one of the first of many falls she will take.
Everyone chuckled.
Vintage Flo.
***
She birthed four sons who grew up in the house where she was born, the house in which she died. The same square footage for 82 years- can you imagine? She and my grandfather never wrangled a mortgage and given my grandfather’s steady income as a house painter, there was no need for her to work outside of her home.
But work she did, leaving her boys with her live-in mother as she accepted a factory job that lasted for decades, a job she spoke fondly of. Interestingly enough, her obituary said nothing of this long-standing employment but did mention her love of knitting and crocheting.
What about the hooked rugs?
This grandmother of mine hooked endless rugs, and one holiday she gifted us a hooked Christmas tree skirt, a rug that brightened the base of our Fraser Fir and served as an annual reminder that she was alive and well, crafting 1000 miles away.
I asked for my own rug kit one year, and through trial and error, mastered the stitch required to loop and twist the thread.
I worked feverishly, even though the yarn made a tight squeaking sound as I yanked it through the mesh square, a horrid noise that gave me the chills.
When I finally completed the project, my parents handed me the phone and mouthed: Thank your grandmother for the kit.
Thank you, Grandma, I said, and then tried to describe the puppy now decorating my bedroom wall.
Oh? she said.
Twisting the phone cord around my hand, cheeks burning, I raced to quell the silence.
How’s the weather at your house? I said, like a grown-up.
I was nine.
***
She had a gentle side with animals.
One summer, our family joined everyone at my grandparents’ cottage on the lake.
My brother and I, children of the sea, frolicked in the lake with our cousins, a body of water dark, strangely murky and still, save for the occasional lapping from the wake of ski boats. I was horrified to discover that the lake bottom was covered in slimy muck.
Which is why the next day, I skipped swimming and meandered to the front of the cottage, surprised to find Flo alone, perched on the front stoop in slippers, her pale arm outstretched, a hill of peanuts on her flattened palm. She sat motionless, her snow-white bouffant teased high; eyebrows arched, thinly penciled.
I held my breath and watched.
After a minute, a timid chipmunk darted from beneath the stoop. Wide-eyed, it inched toward Flo. After a minute, he cocked his head, gathered courage, scuttled up the steps, and nibbled peanuts directly from her palm.
I had never seen my grandmother look so happy.
Serene and almost pretty while smiling at the little fellow.
***
When my father and his brothers were young and fell ill with a stomach virus or fever, Flo shooed them upstairs to their bedroom to wait it out.
What do you mean? I remember asking my father incredulously when he told me this disturbing news. Did she bring you ginger ale? Medicine?
No, he said. We stayed upstairs by ourselves until we were better.
This was unfathomable until the summer visit I came down with strep.
I awakened from a fitful sleep, queasy, fever high, my throat speckled and hot.
As it happened, I was down for the week. My mother came and went with medicine and soup; my aunt tiptoed upstairs with gum and magazines to pass the time. Even Grandpa climbed the stairs to say hello.
But not Flo.
***
We were not supposed to ask our grandmother anything about God. Even though she and Grandpa frequented the same church throughout their marriage, all thoughts about God were considered private, off table.
The only time I heard her mention God was when she took his name in vain.
I worried about this.
***
Frugal to a fault and highly mistrustful of banks, she concealed great sums of cash inside coffee cans, hidden throughout her home. My uncles discovered mountains of money when she died.
All of those presents we gifted her and Grandpa over the years?–birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas–were found untouched, neatly stacked in closets.
***
I have a striking photo of Grandma and Grandpa–young, freshly married, smooth-skinned, handsome–clasping hands outdoors, their gaze set toward the future. This was before they had children, before he was drafted for war, before they were oceans apart for seven entire years, and before he was awarded the Purple Heart.
Those seven years became a locked vault, never opened.
Heaps of stories, gone.
All that remained was silence.
Silence and a scar.
A wartime bullet had grazed Grandpa’s cheek.
***
I told you Flo gave birth to four sons, but that is not quite true.
Days before her first baby was due, he stopped kicking.
Yes, their first son had died in her womb, a devastating fact my grandparents concealed from their four living sons for decades.
Mounds of pain, pushed down, down, down, in an unmarked grave.
A chamber of secrets.
***
Over time, I grew up and grew accustomed to not knowing my grandparents, a former longing that eventually waned with acceptance of what was. I graduated from college and got married. Grandma Flo and Grandpa did not attend our wedding, given it was Out East.
My father was irked, but by then, I understood how little there was to salvage.
The hard truth remained: I did not know my grandparents any better than I knew the older couple who lived three houses up the street.
My husband and I were gifted one son, two sons, and by the time I gave birth to our third little boy, life was rolling along, busy and beautiful and challenging. After our third son’s birth, I descended into the baby blues, inexplicable to my mind while rocking a handsome bundle of pure sweetness.
One afternoon during this fraught time–I will never forget it, so unusual–the mailman delivered a letter from Flo, now seven years a widow. This was the first and only letter (other than generic Christmas cards) I had received from this grandmother of mine.
I was thirty years old.
The card was kindly congratulatory, with a sketch of three little mice each holding a bright balloon. Inside each balloon, Flo had penned my three little boys’ names. And beneath, in wobbly penmanship: Congratulations, Kristin! You are just like me, having all boys. Love, Grandma.
I was surprised to feel a flicker of happiness, a recognition that despite her decades of cool distance, perhaps she did care.
A few weeks later, Flo died suddenly, in the only home she had ever known, never having met my husband, our sons, or our daughter, born a year and a half later.
***
Here are the gems I now cradle, jewels kept from many sad stories I rarely tell:
It does not matter what I think about my grandchildren or what I feel for them quietly on the inside.
My grandchildren cannot read my mind, but they will forever read me.
The baton has been passed, and it is now my chief aim, duty, and unending delight to make certain each one of my grandchildren knows, beyond any shadow of doubt, that they are invaluable gifts from God, always loved and forever cherished.
The Palest Ink 