“I don’t know why everyone at home was complaining about the crunchy cookies last week,” I said into the phone. “I liked them just fine.”
My aunt, sitting across from me in the booth at Mazza’s, stared incredulously as I spoke to my grandma on her phone, while my mom, sitting next to me, just rolled her eyes. They were both pretty surprised, I think, that I had shared more about my week with my grandma, all the way back home, than with the two of them who had made the 2,000-mile trek out to see me. The truth was, as much as I loved talking to my aunt and my mom, I had also really been enjoying my phone conversations with my grandma. I loved hearing the surprise and joy in her voice a few seconds into our call when she finally realized it was me talking, and not one of her daughters. I loved raving about how much everyone adored her homemade cookies (she sends me three bags of them with every care package my parents put together). I loved how much she loved to hear about everything I had to tell her, whether big or small, whether a long story or a short moment from my day. My relationship with my grandma hasn’t always been quite like this, though, because unlike most with their grandmothers, I lived with mine for ten years.
Every day before school there was chaos in the kitchen. While my dad made his lunch, and I (sometimes) tried to squeeze in breakfast, my grandma was taking her morning pills, making her coffee, reviewing her calendar for the day and doing her crossword puzzle beside me at the kitchen table. Five people in a house isn’t all that strange, I know. People with siblings may be reading this and wondering what on earth I’m going on about. But things get a bit more complicated when it’s four adults, two fairly separate couples with their own lives to live, trying to navigate through the same small house. My grandma is 85 but doesn’t look or act like it. Up until a few years ago, she usually walked faster than me when we went on errands. Besides being set in her ways about a few things (okay, a lot of things), my grandma is young at heart and in mind. Sure, she enjoys watching Judge Judy every day, doesn’t know how to work a computer and refuses to learn, and the thought of me in an Uber terrifies her, but this isn’t really what I mean. I don’t feel like I’m talking to an “old lady” when I talk to her—our conversations flow naturally and I enjoy having them. When I lived at home, we did have communication issues sometimes. Seeing her every day made it hard for me to come up with new things to tell her, which she often thought of as me not wanting to talk to her. Junior and senior years were busy, so our once monthly breakfasts or frozen yogurt runs became less frequent. It made me just as sad as it did her. She didn’t seem to understand how much closer we were than most grandmas and their granddaughters, so every little thing that came up convinced her that there was some huge distance between us. Like me, my mother and my aunt, my grandma has a lot of anxiety, which didn’t help (it never does). When I left for college, I was afraid that she would feel that distance even more, and that maybe I would start to feel it too. So I was pleasantly surprised when I called home to talk to her for the first time.
I felt like I could have talked to her for hours. For once, I had so much to tell her! What classes I was taking, what my friends were like, how much I missed her. I was sad when I hung up the phone. Sad because I missed talking to her already, because I had missed out on this feeling when I was back home living with her, because I felt like I didn’t realize how lucky I was until I was across the country. And more than all of that, sad because I wished I had the chance to have this relationship with my grandpa, too.
My grandpa built half the house we all lived in together back when my mom and aunt were kids. Even after he died in 2017, we could always feel him in the walls, the upside-down outlets he put in, the little projects around the house that he would’ve jumped at the chance to tackle. I was always close with my grandpa, even before we moved in. Whenever I came over, we would garden together, and by “garden,” I mean I would watch him tend to the plants as I looked for snails (he helped look sometimes, too). After the move, we got even closer. Every time he went into the kitchen (which he did at least a dozen times a day) and managed to leave with some sweet treat, he’d always bring me one, too. Sometimes it was a dixie cup full of chocolate chips, sometimes a couple of cookies, sometimes a popsicle or a drumstick. Even if I wasn’t hungry, I always ate it. He would let me sit in his big red truck all the time. I felt like a daredevil when he drove me around the block because the thing was so old it didn’t have seatbelts. My friends and I would play make-believe in its bed. It was a boat, a bedroom, a kitchen. But my favorite thing to do was press the horn. It was a little black button right above the steering wheel and even just imagining it now, I am filled with the immense joy I felt back then. I remember the sound clearly, and the smell, but most of all the feeling: “My grandpa is so awesome!”
When I came to Kenyon, my family all wanted to make sure I had a spot. A “Bubba spot,” as my aunt referred to it, where I could go and talk to and remember my grandpa. I went to the cemetery back home to visit him a few times with my family, and once alone, but I never felt like he was there. “The only reason Bubba’s spirit is here right now is because we are too,” I would tell my family. But there are other places I think he feels more at home. For example, out here, I’ve found a tree that reminds me of him (since he loved being outside) and I also feel close to him in the church, a place I know he would have loved if he could see it. Sometimes it sucks missing my grandpa this much, and a little part of me wonders if it would have hurt less if we hadn’t lived together, if we hadn’t been so close. But honestly, I know I wouldn’t trade that for the world.
My relationship with my grandparents is something I’ll always treasure, even if it’s hard sometimes — hard to convince my grandma how much I love her, or hard to miss my grandma as much as I do. I can remember a lot of times growing up when I wished I had more time alone with my parents or more privacy or more opportunities for my friends to sleep over, but honestly—and I’m really shocking my 13-year-old self by saying this—I’m glad I got to live in the same house as my grandparents. Sure, our family was closer than most, and still is. We get into each other’s business a lot, because how can we not when we share the same walls, the same common rooms? But the packed house also comes with a whole lot of love. All of us have trouble showing it sometimes, but the fact that we get to have relationships with each other that are closer than comfort is special, and something to be celebrated. Something that we don’t celebrate enough. To those of you reading this with grandparents or other family that you miss and haven’t talked to in a while, give them a call — they’d love to hear your voice. And to my family reading this, hug each other. Go, right now, yes you, Mom, go hug Grandma. Tell each other how much you all mean to one another because even though I’m all the way out here in Ohio, I still have to make sure you don’t all fall apart (kidding) (sort of). With the perspective I have of being outside of our unique household now, I thought I would feel so refreshed. But really, as messy and hectic as you all are, I miss you more than I can explain.