Tag Archives: grandparents

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Remembering My Gram

This past weekend marked my Gram’s birthday. I won’t tell you how old she would have been because, well, I’m not sure I can do the math. Old. Really old. She passed away in 1983, and at the time she was just shy of her 92nd birthday. I think. I’m pretty sure she would be, like, 134 now. I am also pretty sure she would be ticked at me for telling you how old she would be . . . .

Gram was a wonderful grandmother. She adored all of her grandkids and she doted on us in all the grandmotherly ways. She made a huge fuss over every achievement, she always wanted to hear all about our lives, our friends, our classes at school. I never knew my mother’s parents, and my grandfather on my father’s side was not really part of our lives growing up. But it didn’t matter, because Gram showered us with enough love for four grandparents.

My Gram - April 76Clara Bartels was born in Amsterdam and came to the United States as a small child. Her father was a diamond cutter, and diamond cutters were in great demand in the diamond district of New York City. She grew up around the block from Jacques Cohen, who later in life changed the family’s last name to Coe, and whose father also was a diamond cutter who emigrated from Amsterdam. They would marry, have three kids, and then divorce, bitterly, at a time when divorce was not really something people were supposed to do.

Gram endured a lot in those years. She raised three children by herself, when single mothers with children were expected to remarry with alacrity. She nearly lost my father to meningitis when he was a sophomore in college. The youngest of her kids, my Uncle Bill, died in France during World War II. But she was a survivor and much tougher than anyone would have thought just looking at her.

Clara was maybe — MAYBE — five feet tall. With shoes on. In a stiff tail wind . . . . She had dark hair early in life. When I knew her, she had beautiful, silky white hair. Her smile could power entire cities. Her laugh, which we heard frequently, sounded like a car engine struggling to turn over. She had a terrific sense of humor and loved to laugh when she wasn’t supposed to. Each year, we would go to my Aunt Jean’s house for Passover, and my Uncle Bud would lead the Seder. He was more religious than the rest of us, and he took the Passover rites fairly seriously. And so when Gram would laugh at one thing or another in the Haggadah (which she did every year), he would grow annoyed. Which only served to make her laugh more. Which annoyed him a little more. Which increased her laughter yet again, making the rest of us laugh. Etc. Etc. I loved my uncle. He was a sweet, generous man. And for most of the year, he adored Gram. He always tried to be a good sport during Passover, but Gram didn’t make it easy . . . .

Staying with Gram was a treat. When I was young, whenever my parents went away, I would stay with her in her apartment on the east side of Manhattan. 245 East 63rd Street. The address is seared into my brain. So is her apartment number: 1104. It was a beautiful apartment — I shudder to think what it would cost today — and yet it was a pale substitute for the apartment my older siblings and cousins remember from when they stayed with her. That one was near Central Park and was huge and gorgeous. But no matter where she lived, when we stayed with her we had her all to ourselves. She would make the foods we liked, would take us to Atlantic Beach during the summer, or during the colder months, would take us FAO Schwarz, the famous toy store (the Tom Hanks-Robert Loggia floor-piano scene from Big was filmed there). We would walk with her there, and would be allowed to pick out any (reasonably priced) toy we wanted. After, we would get an ice cream at Schraffts.

Gram wasn’t always the easiest personality. She could be stubborn and even prickly on occasion. The summer after my senior year in college, my folks went away for a couple of weeks, and I stayed alone at our house. (At this point, I hadn’t stayed overnight at Gram’s for several years.) But my dad asked me to call Gram while they were away and I forgot. My high school girlfriend and I were going through a rough patch, and I had friends I wanted to see, and, well, I was a teenager . . . . It was entirely my fault. I know that.

But Gram was really angry with me. So angry that one night, when she and I had dinner at my aunt and uncle’s house, she wouldn’t speak to me. Literally. She directed all her questions and comments to me through my Aunt Jean, who reluctantly served as intermediary, and who later offered her heartfelt sympathy.

Lesson learned. When I went off to college, I made a point of calling Gram every Sunday, no matter what. And at the end of my freshman year, she commented to my father that Brown was a very good place for me. It had taught me responsibility. You can’t make this stuff up.

But episodes of that sort were the exceptions. Most of the time, Gram was fun, loving, silly, and totally engaged in all of our lives. She was, as I have said, a wonderful grandmother. To this day, I miss her laugh, and can hear it in my head when something funny happens.

Happy Birthday, Gram. I love you.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: For Our Adult Children

We want them to be happy, but we know happiness is elusive, and we remember being their age and struggling to find joy ourselves.

We want them to be safe, but we know a safe life is not likely to be an exciting life, a rewarding life.

We want them to find love, but we know that with love often comes pain.

We want them to find success, but who is to say our definition of the word matches theirs? And shouldn’t their definition take precedence?

We want them to be healthy — we would give all to ensure their good health. And they’re so young; they shouldn’t have to worry about disease. But life can be cruel and unjust, and none of us is given guarantees.

We want to be part of their lives. We want them to want us to be part of their lives. But we have spent their lifetimes trying to make them self-sufficient — personally, intellectually, financially. If we do our jobs right and well, they will go off to thrive as independent beings. As they should. As we want. But we also want to be part of their lives.

We take pride in their growth, their maturity, the wondrous adults they have become. But — and we would never, ever tell them this — we still long for those days when they were small enough to clamber into our laps with a book or special toy, content to sit in our arms for just a few moments.

Every now and then, despite their growth and maturity, we find them just as trying as we did when they were two.

We don’t want to rush them — really there’s no hurry — but at some point, at their discretion of course — of course — we would like them to have children. We hear tales of the joys of grandparenting, and of the incredible love our parents and siblings and peers have for their grandkids. We want to experience that, too. And yes, absolutely, one hundred per cent, there can be no denying, we also want to see them deal with the same sort of shit from their kids that they put us through for all those years.

We remember things we did when we were young — stupid, foolish, reckless things. Things that are not all that different from some of the crap they have done. And we think of our parents with sympathy and with guilt.

We will take calls from them at any hour, no matter the circumstances. We read their texts immediately, always. Because we never know. And the truth is, most of the time those calls and texts make us smile or laugh or kvell (a Yiddish word meaning, essentially, to swell with pride). A good conversation with one of them is often the highlight of our day.

We love to hear about their classes or their jobs, their friends and colleagues, their routines as well as their adventures. It’s not that we live vicariously through them — at least it shouldn’t be — but we want to hear that they are having fun, and we want to share in their joys, as we did when they were young.

We worry about them. How can we not? We have since they day they were born. When we wake in the middle of the night, almost invariably our thoughts go to them. We think of things we ought to have mentioned the last time we spoke, and we wonder if they have followed that piece of advice we offered a week ago, or two, or six. Some nights we lie awake for hours with these thoughts.

We savor their visits. We treasure those moments when our core family is together. We listen to them make each other laugh, and it is the sweetest music.

And we end where we began — with wishes for happiness and love, safety and good health, success and excitement. We want the world for them, even knowing how unrealistic these wishes might be. We’re parents, after all. No one expects us to be rational.

Have a great week.