Today would have been my grandfather's 85th birthday.
He was born in Brooklyn but spent his early childhood in my great-grandparents' native Poland. He returned to New York just in time to start elementry school, barely speaking English. He went on to become an engineer.
He came to Washington at the start of World War II. By the time the war was over he'd met and married a government girl from Boston, so instead of going back to Brooklyn or following her to Massachusetts they bought a house in suburban Maryland and raised five kids, the eldest of whom is my mom.
He worked for the government his entire career, first with Navy, then Commerce. I am embarrassed to admit that I don't know what my grandfather did, exactly...just that he worked downtown and for what departments.
On the other hand, the reason I don't know what he did was that he didn't bring his work home with him. When I saw him on weekends it was for family parties, birthdays and holidays and visiting out-of-town friends and family who were always staying at my grandparents' house.
My grandparents rented a beach house in Ocean City every summer when I was young, and my mom and my uncles and the spouses and kids all came down for a week. My grandfather was always an early riser, and in the mornings he and I would walk up to the store (the Fractured Prune) to buy the newspaper. With 16 grandchildren in the family I didn't get a lot of one-on-one time with him, but I did get some.
I had a dream a few weeks ago that I was at the beach with some friends. We were walking up Coastal Highway and I saw some men sitting on the deck of a condo. One of the men was my grandfather. I jumped up on the deck and kissed him hello, and asked if he wanted to come with us. He indicated his cane and said he couldn't walk much, but told me to have a good time. I left him on the deck, and when I woke up the memory of the dream confused me. I couldn't figure out when I'd been to the beach with those particular friends or why we'd gone in cold weather. It dawned on me very slowly that it was just a dream, and the main point that made reality dawn is that my grandfather died in 1996. I did not kiss him hello on the deck.
It wasn't such a sad realization, though. It has been seven years since I saw him, but the dream felt like a visit. I only wish I'd stayed and visited longer.
Posted by Nic at December 17, 2003 07:34 PM | TrackBack