Legacy - My Paternal Grandparents

My father's parents moved to California before I was a year old. They took with them my father's two older brothers and their young families, and his younger sister.

I don't know why my father stayed. Perhaps my mother didn't want to move. In any event, this meant that my paternal grandparents were not people I knew very well.

They existed for me for a long time as a voice on the phone into which I blew kisses at my mother's urging, strange Christmas presents under the tree that I generally did not play with (which in hindsight is terrible, because I suspect these presents were a bit of a hardship for them to send along to my brother and me), and people my father talked about. To me, they were like ghosts.

Finally, they visited when I was about 10 or so. I don't recall much about that visit, or even another one after that. They were here. One of my uncles came with them (I think, I may be mixing up visits) and brought his young daughters with him, so I had playmates to think of, not older folks who sat around playing guitar and talking.

My grandmother talked very fast and very loudly. She loved to cook, I do remember that. She would have dinner waiting when my mother came home from work. She was good in the kitchen.

My Grandpa Joe played the guitar and told stories.

These visits did not last long.

We drove to California in 1976 to visit my grandparents and my father's family. I don't recall much about seeing them. My cousin had run away from home, and there was much concern about her, I remember that. She was a year older than I and she was a constant source of trouble, from what I had overhead my parents say. I remember much ado about her being missing, some guitar playing, a trip to a vast flea market where my mother bought a lamp with an orange shade with fringe on it, and that's about it.

My grandparents came to visit again in 1981, around March. They came in a camper and said they would stay until my graduation in June. I was quite excited about this. But my grandmother, after about two weeks or so, said she missed her dog and they left. I had words with my grandmother about this; I remember that. When I apologized as they were leaving, she said I didn't hurt her, only her feelings.

I think she might have had some health troubles going on at the time, but I didn't know that and still that's a guess. I only felt that I had been lied to and that people I wanted to love and to love me had let me down.

The guitar that I'm playing now came to me at this time, I think. Grandpa Joe gave it to me as a sort of graduation/consolation prize, I think.

After I married, I began corresponding by mail with my grandfather. I felt a kinship with him that I did not feel with my father's other relatives. He sent me stories that he wanted preserved because he thought I would keep them (I still have them). He wrote me poems, and he tried to give me life advice, but not much, really. I guess he thought I'd learn whatever I needed to know.

They visited again about 1988, and my grandfather died a year later. They were pleased to see my house, happy with my husband, and glad that I seemed settled. 

I did not see either of them again, although my grandmother lived to be 97. She died in 2017. After I bought a cellphone, I called her, and until her hearing went, we talked monthly. But after a while she thought I was the cleaning lady or some other person who visited her, and I stopped calling. I sent her cards with notes in large print so she could see them. One of my cousins told me she kept every one of them and had them when she died.

Going out to visit her was never an option. My husband wouldn't leave the farm or his job for very long and I didn't want to go by myself. My uncles smoked and drank a lot of beer, and I didn't want to be in that kind of atmosphere without my husband to ensure my safety. They would not have hurt me, but I can't take a lot of yelling and arguing, and if there is one thing members of my father's family can do, it's yell and argue. I think to them it's conversation, but to me it's nerve wracking.

Anyway, describing these two people is difficult for me because I did not know them. I cannot paint a word picture of them like I could my maternal grandmother. All I have are scattered memories and my grandfather's words on paper.

This was my loss. Maybe it was their loss, too.