Filed under: Blog
I returned from my grandparents’ house today with 6 different succulent trimmings, a bag full of pear-shaped yellow tomatoes, another bag of heirloom tomatoes, a bag of lemons, a handful of corriander seeds, a lavender boquet (all these items from Grandma’s garden), a wealth of investment advice from Grandaddy, leftover jumbalaya from the Elephant Bar, and $8 that was my grandma’s change from the craft store that she gave me to pay for the BART fare 
I’m a gleeful child with all these freebies! And my grandparents are SO cute. When we were walking back to the car after dinner I noticed Grandaddy was still wearing his old holey slippers — I knew he was rebelious (hasn’t cut his hair or trimmed his beard in over 15 years) — but now he won’t even put on shoes to go out!As loony as they are, I love hearing their stories. Like when they lived in Japan and their bedroom was 5′x7′ and they had a mattress specially built to fit perfectly inside the room. Or when Grandaddy was in the Navy and they shared a 3 bedroom house amongst 4 couples (the landlord put up a sheet in the dining room for his wife and himself) and each couple got a shelf in the refrigerator and one scheduled hour in the kitchen to cook and eat. Or during the Great Depression when Grandaddy would get a loaf of white bread frosted in peanut butter for his birthday cake (he still loathes peanut butter.) Or when Grandma moved out to get married to Grandaddy after they got set up on a blind date by Grandaddy’s second cousin and her parents moved to Honolulu.There’s still so much about them and stored up inside of them that I fear I’ll never know and never be able to remember. I learned for the first time today why their youngest daughter’s middle name was April. But I forget already, which frustrates me. Today for the first time I saw this beautiful desk that my Great Great Aunt Hazel’s husband made. I learned that Grandaddy’s grandaddy was named Charles Newton Stevens. I rememberd that Grandaddy grew up in Long Beach and Grandma grew up in San Mateo and Menlo Park. I learned again that my Great Aunt Elena worked for Head Start. I don’t know why these little details are so important to me. It’s like it’s a part of my history (and it’s shaped me in surprising ways — like the Head Start thing) and I know the access to this history is not going to last for long.I think one of the reasons I visit them so infrequently now is that when I go to Fremont I’m haunted by the memories of my other grandparents who lived there too. When I was a kid we would go see all four of them in the same day. I keep meaning to have a day with my sister (we are his only grandkids) to celebrate Opa where we pop pop corn in oil on the stove and eat it out of wooden bowls and drink diet pepsi and eat Hershey bars off TV trays while watching baseball. But when Oma died, I grieved because she was a kindred spirit to me. I can’t really explain why — I mean I know I get my artsyness and green thumb from both of my grandmothers — but Oma and I did not have a whole lot in common except for our souls, I think. I look back on how she took foster kids into her home for years and think it was how she dealt with the poverty and social problems she saw in her community and attacked it with her God-given sense of justice and a desire for change. I crack up to think that she actually won first place in a “Suzie Homemaker” competition with her ability to make delicious recipes on a dime. She was stubborn and had a lot of pain in life, but out of all my grandparents, I think I bear her spiritual legacy the most. I think like Oma, I am a little confused by God, and maybe a little afraid of him, but at the same time melted by his beauty and drawn in by his care for the orphan and widow. And like her, I keep plugging away, organizing and being frugal and bending over to pick up crumbs on the kitchen floor and singing hyms and loving foster kids all to the glory of this God that I can’t see or understand but hope one day, like her, to meet.
