Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.
There are very few positive memories of my life before I turned about 25 that don't involve sitting around the kitchen table at my grandparents' house. They lived on W. 105th Street in Cleveland, in a not so great neighborhood that was probably a lot nicer when they bought the house. If you drove past their house you probably wouldn't have looked twice at it - a two story, light blue, unassuming house with a swing on the front porch and a front lawn that was, quite literally, about 4 feet wide from the sidewalk to the porch. But to me that house was a second home. It was the gathering place. It was the hub that connected the spokes of my mother's far spreading family.
My earliest memory at my grandparents' house is actually my first memory of anything, but it's not a great one. My uncle was very sick when I was very young, and died when I was five. My only memory of him is sitting next to his bed in what would later become my grandparents' bedroom. As he lay in the dimly lit room, his body being torn apart by several different types of cancer at once, I sat in a kitchen chair next to his bed and read a Paddington Bear book to him.
When I asked my mom about this the other day, just to see if my memory was correct, she said that I would read that book to him every day, but also a Curious George book and a Sesame Street book every once in a while. She said that my uncle, who was only 23 when he died, wouldn't let anyone in his room except me and my grandparents.
When I was growing up my dad was an Ironworker. While the money was awesome, there were many very lean times for us whenever he was laid off, which typically happened at least three times a year. Sometimes it would only be for a week or two. Sometimes it would be as long as six months. During the longer layoffs, food became somewhat scarce in our house. Not only were my parents trying to feed myself and my two sisters, but for several years my cousin lived with us as well. During these times my grandparents basically sustained the four of us kids. We would eat dinner there a minimum of four times a week, and if it was summertime when my dad was out of work, some or all of us kids would stay with my grandparents for weeks at a time to help ease the burden on my parents.
Times weren't great for my grandparents during this time, either. Another uncle is only 9 years older than me (my mom is one of eight siblings - four boys, four girls). When he was 16, he was at a friend's house getting stoned with a group of friends. While screwing around, someone knocked over a motorcycle. My uncle was laying on the tree lawn near the bike, and when it fell, the gas tank caved in his skull. It took four years for him to be able to put together a complete sentence, and it was nearly a decade before he could walk without a cane or walker. Yet even with the mountains of medical bills my grandparents incurred, they still made sure we didn't go hungry, and although my parents won't talk about it, I'm almost positive that it was because of my grandparents that we kept our house.
Not all of my memories at my grandparents' house are sad ones. In fact, almost all the rest are extremely positive.
It's a mystery to most of us as to how my grandparents stayed married for so long. After my uncle died, my grandfather became a raging alcoholic. There were times when he wouldn't go home for days - he would work a twelve hour shift at the aluminum plant he worked at, get off work at 3 AM, sleep in his truck until the bar around the corner from work opened at 5:30 AM, and drink until it was time to go back to work. Yet, whenever he was home, drunk or sober (admittedly, I don't remember him being sober often), he was without question one of the nicest people you could ever meet.
He was also extremely quirky. He owned almost 300 acres of land in the mountains outside Bradford, PA, where he grew up. We would go camping there in the summer, and in the fall he, my dad, and several other guys would go deer hunting up there. One time when we were camping - I must have been 6 or 7 - I caught a frog in a creek. I ran up to him -"Grandpa, Grandpa, I caught a frog!!" He scooped it out of my hands and before I could even blink shoved it in his mouth and started chewing. The frog's legs kicked and twitched for a moment, then went still right before he sucked them in and chewed them up as well, and swallowed the damned thing. Naturally, being the emotional mess that I've been my entire life, I bawled like a baby.
He was also known to eat live snakes - head first, "Because they go down smoother." He would eat a block of Limburger cheese without flinching. Yet the moment he smelled or saw baby poop, the flood gates would open and he would puke so much it was hard to believe that much stuff was coming from one person. My sister, when we were teenagers, was at the kitchen table with Grandpa, watching TV and eating a Ho-Ho. She chewed some up and in her infinite wisdom said, "Look Grandpa! It's poop!" and opened he mouth showing him the chewed up chocolatey goodness. He didn't stand a chance. He started dry heaving, and almost - but not quite - made it to the bathroom before he puked.
Watching my grandparents interact with each other was kind of amazing. I only heard either of them say something negative to or about another person once (when we were grown {I think I was 22 or 23} Grandpa called my cousin, the one who lived with us as kids, the "laziest piece of shit" he'd ever known), yet they were rarely civil toward each other. The quote my sisters and I always use when talking about them is from one of the most random acts of "what the hell did I just witness?" They were arguing about who knows what anymore, and my grandfather yells, "Jesus Christ, Marion! We're you born on fucking Mars?" Grandma yells back, "No, Jack, but you make me wish I was! Now go fuck yourself!" If you ever wonder where I get my foul mouth from you need look no further than my grandparents and my dad.
The best memories I have from my childhood are from being at my grandparents' house Christmas Eve. It was easily the most important day of the year for our family. We would get there around three in the afternoon, and over the next eight or nine hours - we rarely left before 11 PM - we would get to visit with what seemed like everyone my grandparents had ever known. Great aunts, great uncles, distant cousins, and even my grandpa's best childhood friends who still lived in Bradford would come to town. Most of my mom's siblings would be there, and many of their friends that they grew up with would come to visit. It was a constant rotation of people coming, visiting for a while, and leaving, only to be replaced by more faces we only saw on Christmas Eve. In all the years my grandparents hosted this party, I don't remember a single argument or fight, and even my grandparents were genuinely nice to each other for the night.
Above everything, my grandparents loved their grandchildren unconditionally, but my sister and I were undeniably the favorites. It was probably because we were the closest - one of my aunts was in the Air Force lived in Brazil, Washington DC, and Florida while her daughters were young; another aunt and two uncles didn't have kids until my sister and I were teenagers; my other uncle has a son who is a year or so younger than my sister but I've only seen him once my whole life. Finally there was the cousin who lived with us for a few years, who Grandpa called lazy. Once he moved back in with my aunt, they moved to Tampa, where they've lived for about 25 years now.
I've really gotten off point in this post.
Another favorite memory of my grandparents' house involved a whole lot of law breaking. My grandparents both smoked like chimneys when we were kids. Grandma smoked Winston Lights, Grandpa smoked Pall Mall non-filters. Across the street from their house was a cigar store, and beginning when I was about 8, they would send us to the store to get their smokes. At first we had to take notes from our grandparents, but eventually the guys who ran the store knew as soon as we walked in to put a pack of cigarettes on the counter, with a pack of matches on top. My grandparents would always give whoever was going to the cigar store enough money for the cigarettes, a can of pop (I always chose Cotton Club Creme Soda), and a candy bar (Twix or Baby Ruth for me).
If I had to guess, I would estimate I spent about a third of my life at my grandparents' house up until I was 16 or 17. The vast majority of those times were some of the happiest times of my life. When they passed away, when I was in my late twenties (he went first, she went four months later) my uncle who had gotten hurt by the motorcycle inherited the house, and immediately sold it. The weekend that we moved everything out of the house was undescribably sad. No one talked very much, we all just kind of stayed in our own little worlds.
A few months ago one of my younger cousins told everyone the house had been purchased by developers, along with several other houses on the street, and that it would be torn down. One of my uncles had a cookout in late June, and afterward I decided to drive past the house to say one final goodbye.
I was too late. The house where many of my happiest memories resided was nothing but a pile of rubble.
I've never really dealt with the death of my grandparents properly. Or at all. I've only been to their gravesite once, the day we buried their ashes together. It's been twelve years and I've never gone back. I miss them every single day, and wish they could've met my kids.
The title and line at the beginning are a quote from Alex Haley.
<3 love you. listening.
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