Toy cars

My grandfather was in junior high during World War II, and to save money, the town he lived in--Mamaroneck, NY--shut down the junior high school and arranged it so that the high school kids went to school in the morning, until about 1 p.m., and then they would leave the building and the junior high kids would come in and go to school all afternoon and evening. He and his friends would meet at Walter's, a now famous hot dog stand, eat lunch, and then flip a coin to decide whether to go to school, or to go to New Rochelle to see a movie. When his father found out about this, he sent my grandfather, about 14 years old at the time, to military school.

He and my grandmother knew each other from the time she was sixteen years old, and they had a real love story, complete with near misses, reappearances, wartime correspondence, and a lei sent from Hawaii all the way to Connecticut for her college graduation. They were married for 58 years and had five children, despite fertility issues after their first.

It was hard to go through a loss while pregnant and miserable and not able to tell many people what was going on without giving something away that I wasn’t ready to discuss. I thought about my grandfather all the time. He died before I had a chance to tell him that I was having a baby—about one month before I really planned to tell any of my family—and I was so sad I hadn't been able to tell him. But the strangest thing was, very soon after he passed away, I started feeling my grandfather close to me. It felt like we had a connection that I can’t really explain, but the farther along I got, the more connected to him I felt. It might sound a little more, lets say, mystical than I usually do, but I could feel him watching out for us, for Liam and me. Every time we had to do some kind of test to find out about the health of my unborn baby and the results came back positive, I would think, "Grampy did that." Every time I was scared something was wrong, I asked him for help—never out loud, I would just think as hard as I could, “Grampy, please make this turn out ok.” He came through every time.

I knew Liam would look like different people in my family and in Kurt’s, but I couldn’t have guessed that he would have Grampy’s smile exactly. It was a smile I didn’t think I’d ever see again outside of photographs. So, in a way it's like he's still here, like he'll always be here with me. For a long time, I felt like maybe it was just wishful thinking, but recently Kurt, Liam and I went to see my grandmother in Greenwich, CT, and she, my two aunts, and one of my cousins all agreed that Liam is (sometimes) a dead ringer for his great grandfather.

It was a great loss for this world when it had to let go of the man I called Grampy. I still feel him close by sometimes, and I take solace in that, and the knowledge that he knows the truth about some things, now, that he didn’t really know about in life. He would have been great with Liam, what with their shared love of little toy cars and ball sports. And I feel lucky to have been able to invite him to my wedding, that he met and got to know Kurt, and that we got to have a few really great visits before he was gone. I hope he was able to forgive me for the disagreements we had.

Anyway. I was just thinking about him today and thought I’d write and post all of this. Miss you, Grampy.