I sat my father down in the kitchen so I could interview him about his father. His father had died 5 years prior and though the wounds had healed you could still see the scars and the pain behind my father’s eyes. I asked him the question: what was the best thing your father has ever done for you? With the other questions he took time to think about it, shuffling through his memories, but with this question he took no time at all. He answered, “He was present and made sure I knew it.” My grandfather grew up in Philadelphia with his mom, Mary, and his father, Saul. Saul was never a good father, he was always jealous of my grandfather for his accomplishments and his life. My grandfather didn’t want to be like this, he wanted to be there for his kids, he wanted his children to love him, they did. My grandfather was a family therapist. He helped people process and deal with emotions. How to shuffle through them and help people find the light in the darkest of times. He had to transform himself for his patients, he dug through their lives as if they were filing cabinets to find the best and the happiest of times to remind each of them how much they truly had. He used his own pain and his own trauma to feel empathy and made each of his patients feel special and treasured. If you dug past his pessimistic and stubborn outside you found the good and the incredible within him. The first time my mother ever met my grandfather was on a sunny Monday in New York. Her and my father waited by the curb for him to come. My father looked over my mother’s shoulder and chuckled. He pointed behind her and when she turned around my grandfather was standing there in full bike gear. A bright red bike helmet, knee pads, shoulder pads, and elbow pads. The whole family still laughs at the first impression he made on my mother. One thing I still admire about my grandfather is his freeness. His ability to be himself, to express who he was without embarrassment. To love himself no matter what. His ability to not care.
Memory as Character, by Zoe
My grandfather wore a ring on his left hand. Him and my grandmother had gotten it in Jamaica many years ago. On it was a red cardinal with multi-colored triangle designs surrounding it. On the inside of the ring, carved in tiny letters, was the logo of the makers but it is too far back in my memory for me to remember what it said. I was five when he gave me that ring. My small bony fingers allowed the ring to easily slip off, so my dad took the ring away until I was old enough to wear it. Me and my best friend got a friendship necklace and next to the half of a heart that came with the chain I added my grandfather’s ring. Once I went on a flight to go see my grandmother at Stanford as she was doing a senior course. When I returned home after a weekend of bathing myself in the California sun I dug around in my backpack to find that my grandfather’s ring was nowhere to be found. I felt as if there was a huge hole in my stomach, as if I had somehow lost more of him. I was seven when my grandfather died. I knew death happened but I didn’t understand it. I remember going upstairs, where my grandparents lived, and sitting next to babas bed. My dad and my mom stood by my side as I held my stuffed bunny close to my heart, as if to protect it. I knew he had been sick for a while because his heart didn’t pump enough blood which was why his feet were always purple. That night my grandmother’s dog woke her up in the middle of the night and led her to my grandfather’s side. She watched him take his final three breaths and his soul swim away with a smile. My story reflects on the wider world around me by talking about loss. Us as humans have all experienced loss. We have all experienced sadness. We have all experienced pain either mentally or physically. We have all lost someone close to us and gained someone who changed our lives for the better. This is simply how life works, we are knocked down over and over but find the will and the strength to stand again only now to find that we are stronger than before.
Deep Observation, by Noah
At 8:30 pm I—still wet from my post-swimming practice shower– sat down on my soft blue couch with a plate of warm red pasta in my lap to watch the Cincinnati Reds take on the Milwaukee Brewers. After about 10 minutes two of my dogs, Butter the coonhound, (with her floppy ears and her habit of turning three times before curling up in a ball) and Albus, the old beagle, (with the tilted head and long pink tongue that sticks out the side of his mouth) crowded into the room and onto the couch next to me. My 6-year-old brother Thomas announced his entrance with his Black Panther spear and usual question of, “Did someone hit a cycle?” referring to his pride of knowing what a cycle in baseball is. (A player hits a single, double, triple and homerun in the same game.) The small green tv room is mostly all couch with a floor covered in Thomas’ toys and a wall of my mother’s books. Everyone on the couch always snuggles in one of the many fleece blankets with Santas or gnomes or orange bats that we seem to collect from Kroger the supermarket each holiday. On the flat platform top of the couch, dishes and glasses collect over the course of the night as I finish dinner and then we all snack on fruit, sherbet and root beer. In the top of the third inning Elly De La Cruz lifted a 456-foot homer to put the Reds on top of the Brewers 1 to 2! My brother and I whooped, yessssss!-ed, cheered and then high fived. My Dad ran into the room, late for the game. In the next inning, Spencer Steer made an error to the second baseman. After that play, my Dad and I both agreed that Spencer Steer should be playing 1st base. The sherbet was sweet and the root beer was fizzy. My Dad is wrapped in the gnome blanket between the wall of baby pictures and Butter. He talks to the players on the tv, criticizing errors that he is sure he would have avoided. His “yesssss!” is louder than mine and he usually pumps his fist Luis Castillo style. He is interrupted often by Thomas jumping on him while yelling, “Hulk-smash!” Dad flips him over on the couch for tickling. When the inning continues, they stop and settle down again. With each commercial break the three of us would repeat every commercial word for word. Only a handful of commercials are played during a game and they are played over and over. Most seemed to be public service announcements from the government and the acting was terrible. My brother laughed loudly and acted out the commercials. We both would start laughing as soon as we recognized the commercial. Near the end of the game, my dog Lucy joined and squeezed onto the couch, snuggling up to me with her big soft coat. The Reds lost the game in the bottom of the ninth inning when Christian Yelich hit a walk off single that scored Blake Perkins from 2nd. Only my dad and I were left with sleeping dogs difficult to wake up and the messy collection of Thomas’ toys. We collected the dishes to bring to the sink and made our way up the stairs to bed talking about the next Reds game to come.
