The Grandfather Problem

Grief, and Hope. Part 2

AIRPLANES by Local Natives

I did not know you as well as my father
Father knew you
Every question, you took the time to sit and look it up
Look it up in the encyclopedia

I love it all
So much I call
I want you back, back, back
You back

I love it all
So much I call
I want you back, back, back
You back, yeah

It sounds like we would've had a great deal to say
To say to each other
I bet when I leave my body for the sky, the wait
The wait will be worth it.

“I don’t have a Grandpa,” Jackson says. “He died before I was born.”

“And PawPaw can’t walk. He doesn’t really do anything.”

These are things we’d never say. Thoughts we don’t even let ourselves have.

*

“If God can do anything,” Walker says one Christmas Eve a few years ago, as I’m putting him to bed in Texas, “why doesn’t he cure Paw Paw’s sickness?” I don’t remember if I had the heart to tell Walker that Paw Paw would never walk again, that he would never be well again—is only getting worse—on the same night that he’s dreaming of Santa Claus and presents.

*

Reeves never says much of anything. He draws a picture that he hides from us, which I unearth: of one Grandfather in a wheelchair, and a solitary gravestone that says R.I.P.

How do I raise three boys without a Grandfather?

August 11 marked nine years since their paternal grandfather Jim’s death, and November 17 marked five years since their maternal grandfather Randy’s stroke. Jackson talks of this almost weekly, how he is the only brother who never met Grandpa Jim, even though when Reeves “met” Jim, Reeves was only five weeks old as he briefly lay next to Jim on his deathbed. Hello. Goodbye. At the same time.

Jackson is also the only brother who vocally rebukes his other, invalid grandfather, the OCD in Paw Paw still expressive, still a touch overbearing, selfish, and sometimes even critical, but maybe one of the things that actually keeps him alive. I love my Dad deeply, and he and my Mom won’t mind me telling these things, the story of our lives. He’s been this way for as long as I can remember. I don’t have many memories before I was seven, when my Dad’s brother Ron passed away of a heart attack. All my significant memories of my Dad are post-trauma. And thus, they’re layered with his trauma-responding OCD, a defense mechanism subconsciously curated to maintain the illusion of safety and control. An expression of his deep love, and his deep grief.

"A fatherless girl thinks all things possible and nothing safe."

--Gloria Vanderbilt

I am not fatherless, but I also could have called this post “Daddy Issues.” Because my son’s grandfather is my father, and my son’s other grandfather is my father-in-law, who was like having, all too briefly, another (normal? happier) father with a different way of viewing the world, different wisdom to teach, and different love to share, and then he died. I say I am not fatherless, but I wonder what it would be like to have had a Dad who didn’t come home each night after work and scold us for how messy the house was (a few pillows out of place, the fringe on the living room rug askew, which he would proceed to comb straight with an actual hair pick), command us to do our homework, then shut himself in his bedroom to watch crime dramas like “Law& Order: SVU,” sports, and the news, and chain smoke while consuming beer. This was normal, right? This was how everyone else lived. You don’t get asked by your father about your day or if you need help with your homework. You simply obey and disappear.

The “SVU part.” This is an important detail, because my Dad deeply aligns with Mariska Hargitay’s character Captain Olivia Benson, as he does with all of his film and TV heroes. He lives through them. He is them. They achieve a justice he can’t, and they do things he’ll never do. Or rather, they do exactly what he would do, if he could do. And, his investment in Olivia Benson absolutely speaks to the fact that my father is an undercover feminist. He’d never say that…men of his generation don’t say such things. Or maybe even more, it’s because for him, it’s just so obvious. Why would he need to pronounce and articulate that women are awesome and all-powerful? Duh. My Dad’s a Bro, but not a Bro Bro…that is, I’ve never witnessed him assert dominance that’s overtly gender-related. He’s always fully empowered me and believed I could do what I wanted to do, unless it scared him. Unless the dream was too big, the sky too high.

Or maybe, it’s embarrassing for him to point out he believes in the efficacy of women. Or maybe discussing it would signify a release of control or power of some sort. He empowers my mother but also has a hold over her, in which I now realize she is not only a willing, but an enthusiastic, participant. She can do anything, but she also must do certain things. The balance (which always felt to me like an imbalanced dysfunctionality that somehow functions miraculously, and even lovingly) of their marriage depends on it. It’s both…my Mom has to be absolutely empowered to be in charge of him and the house and the money and her 41 year career in order to keep them afloat. And she must also perform all the domestic duties he requires and let him get away with his idiosyncrasies. Through them, I learned that love in a marriage has something to do with the tolerance and the forgiveness of idiosyncrasies. My Mother’s two roles in her marriage feel out of line, one dominant and one subservient. But while this is true, it is also true that my Dad’s dependency on her…his bone deep, soul deep love for her…his eternal admiration of her…as his hero, doing things he could never do, and also doing exactly what he would do if he could do, gave her the absolute power the whole time.

Maybe it is also because a woman my Dad knew was raped many decades ago, and family lore tells that he and my uncle Ron did do something about it to her rapist. Something terrible. Something deserved. I’ll never ask, because I like to think this horrific fairytale is true, that for once, the good guys got revenge, and justice was served duly, and the McBeth family was formidable and actionable, and not only, in their darkest hidden parts, broken, despairing, and angry.

And then there are my grandfathers, two pillars who truly helped raise my brother and me. Isn’t it something that both of them stuck around to attend my wedding when I was at the old maid’s age of 32? They were both oooold. And then the winter after my wedding, within one month’s time of each other, they both died. These were men who did do what they could do, who stuck around for as long as they could until I was safe.

I still have grief about this. Not debilitating grief, not at all, but the sublime, profound grief in the lifelong processing of how amazing they both were. At how they knew, I mean they knew! Their roles in my life. The dysfunction at home. The sadness that could have swallowed us all, but in large part, thanks to them, didn’t. And not once did they criticize my father in front of me for what he did or didn’t do, for who he was or wasn’t, for how he treated my mother or my brother and me—much less, for if my father could have shown up differently for our extended family. My grandmothers, the same. My Mom’s parents never said a single negative word about my Dad, and they could have had lots of opinions. And maybe the downside of that was that what happened in our family became normalized and taught me some unproductive things, but it also ensured that I had a happy childhood. I would say that I really did. So many wonderful, soul nourishing, life affirming, innocent and wholesome memories. Spades, hearts, monopoly, Balderdash. Shooting practice, standing long jump, the tire swing, the ball in a sock with a bat. Racing around the house. Building birdhouses. Tractor rides, beekeeping, and brisket. The BB gun. Motor home trips to Lady Bjrd Johnson Park. Eggs benedict every single Christmas. Gifts on sale from Wal-Mart pouring out of closets, meant to be hidden but knowing exactly where they were. Wondering which cousin would receive them. Guessing right most times, being surprised sometimes, and covetous other times.

Swimming, so much swimming every summer. Dripping wet on the Pak n Sak floor and picking out candy. Blue Bell Ice Cream, Homemade Vanilla. The Luann Platter at Furr’s. Driving the tractor on the trail on the land they owned down beneath the house on the hill. Bluebonnets covering that hill. Driving up that hill as we arrived in our car, my Dad driving, Easter or Christmas, Grandpa and cousins outside cracking pecans or practicing the standing long jump, waiting for us to arrive, waving their hands wildly upon seeing us, screaming and running down that hill. Driving the truck. Learning to drive at age eleven.

It wasn’t until I was in middle school and high school that cracks appeared.

The cracks were there…had been there most of the way…but I hadn’t seen them. Who would with such rich childhood memories? As childhood faded, and I learned to drive and was no longer enticed by the tractor or the standing long jump. We did still shoot the BB gun rifle, and I was champion, but even that faded as my brother began to hunt and became the champ. The cracks manifested mostly through their impact on my life choices through college and adulthood. Because things were no longer cookie cutter and contained. I didn’t live under my parents’ roof where outcomes were controlled by fear of noncompliance, and I started to make decisions and meet people and do things to shore up childhood cracks that I didn’t even understand. Because I didn’t understand. I didn’t know myself. I knew some things. And some of the things I didn’t know or didn’t have in my tool box led to wobbly and divergent roads and grave mistakes.

And the things I did know and did have led to incredible adventures, achievements, and memories. And ironically, to a deep knowing of self that allowed me to survive the mistakes from the cracks.

If my sons don’t have a grandfather, who is going to fill and forge our cracks?

We are currently taking applications.

Who will help us raise these boys? Who will take them fishing and teach them how to play hearts, and change the oil and the tires and smoke a brisket? And shell pecans, and pick figs, and play golf. Who will tell them stories of the old days? And play board games and go on tractor rides and learn about the different kinds of trees. Who will teach them how to use a saw in the woodshop and shoot a BB gun? Who will practice the standing long jump with them, and catch butterflies? Who will make a swing out of a tire and push them to the highest heights?

In her book BRAVING THE WILDERNESS, Brene Brown discusses the “High Lonesome,”  her term that’s derivative from the time when WW1 veterans would return stateside from the war, walk along the railroad tracks toward home, and cry out. Their cries were loadd and complex, filled with many emotions: anguish, remorse, relief, disbelief, despair, hope, acknowledgement, exasperation, understanding, loneliness, grief, and yes, love. Layers of love. Undercurrents of love. Tinged with love. Filled with love.

Because of love. A return to love. And because of loss, a lack of love. All the other emotions exist because of it. These blog posts are my High Lonesome.

Like my birthday, the end of a calendar year always feels significant. What goals did we accomplish? Which ones did we miss? Are we further along on projects and progress than last year? Who are we now? And, are we happy? The holidays always make things seem so much bigger and more serious. Now that I’m completing this essay in the new year and we’ve been surrounded by loving friends and family in a series of holiday events, I am filled with hope because this was the first year, ironically, when I wasn’t desperately, bittersweetly, and even despairingly chasing after the nearly lost Christmas traditions that threatened to die (or that did die) with my grandparents, and because we spend every Christmas not in Texas, but in Wisconsin now. This was the first year where I realized that maybe doing things differently…doing our own thing…might work for us. We can keep the things we treasure and enjoy. We can tweak the things that don’t feel right for the size and age of our family. We can gage what’s happening every season and how that impacts how we celebrate. Sometimes it might need to be quiet. Sometimes loud. After all, aren’t we all in a state of healing recovery from something? Maybe the joy of Christmas and the reason for the season is acknowledging and giving reverence to it. We loved hosting five events this past holiday season because it felt like the right thing to do. It felt like it set these groups of different friends and family up officially, in a way, as our people. It was an appropriate way to end a monumental year of hard work, soul searching, and evolution by pulling our people in closer. Loving them harder. And saying thank you.

These are the people we will protect. And these are the people who offer their protection.

Protection. I’ve realized it’s been a theme for my entire life, if not a personal battle cry. There was some lack of it in childhood for me, because my Mom had to do almost everything and didn’t have time for almost anything. We were always doing, doing, doing. I did all of the laundry for the entire family by the time I was 10. After school, we could squeeze in errands and chores and mountains of homework from honors and AP classes and work for the clubs in which we volunteered, and sports practices. My Dad worked six days a week, did not participate in our after school activities, and either played golf on Sundays or mowed the yard.

Time. It was time. We did not have a ton of time together as a family, in a calm and nurturing way. That’s why holidays were so special. They were my favorite. Time stopped, and we were together, and we were always at my grandparents’. In that way, there was, conversely, an abundance of protection in my upbringing. There was, and there wasn’t. There was both. Where it was missing was where my Grandparents filled in. Somehow, everything on this Earth felt OK, in large part, because of them.

My paternal grandfather Ralph knew how to make a brisket. He knew how to carve a turkey, and he always gave us a slice at Thanksgiving while he cut, steam rising from the center, nearly burning his hands. He could fix anything on the car or in the house. He was an absolute master at card games and board games…I would realize…a strategic genius, clearly with a high IQ. He played to win. I love that he didn’t let us win. We LOVED watching him beat us. It made us learn and step up to the challenge. And it felt almost impossible, every time. It was actually magical. Grandpa wins again. Counting cards? Must have been. Anticipating our moves. Sure did. A WW2 officer through and through, until the end. In that way, he held onto and fulfilled his training. He gave us the best of what he had. He taught us how to think. How to make decisions. How to determine priorities. How to protect ourselves. How to win. My grandmothers, and certainly my parents, taught me these things as well. They were all layers of learning, layers of humanity folded onto the nurturing cocoon of my life. Every one of them made a difference.

My maternal grandfather Elston was six foot two, a former Marine in WW2, a boxer, a teacher, and a high school football coach. He was formidable and highly respected all over town. They called him Coach. He was commanding in his way, teaching us things. He was also quiet. He spent lots of time making roach motels and birdhouses and signs in his woodshop, and he picked figs and pecans from his trees, and kept his own bees, and he loved to take care of the land. He knew things about life, and he showed us things we’d never see at home. Cedar trees, and oak trees, and butterflies, and bugs. Shooting a BB gun, and hitting the baseball, and running, always running, as fast as we could to beat one another around the house. I wouldn’t learn until my 40s that my Grandfather Elston was Rifle Marksman in WW2. He never, ever, ever talked about it. All that time, he had been teaching us marksmanship, what he knew for protection. Another true soldier. Teaching us, but keeping us from his truth in the South Pacific. Bodies. Up to your knees.

I would use Elston’s driving lessons to impress my Dad when he taught me how to drive. Because there were sacred moments and times in our lives together. The sense of scarcity of these is what made them so special. I’ll never forget asking my Dad for help with coloring a poster when I was ten, and watching him color it in differently than I’d ever seen. Technique, style, panache, beauty, edge. It was maybe the only time I ever saw this side of him in my entire life. The artist, creating. He clearly had taste and a flair for it in his opinions and selections in my parents’ homes and in my homes. But I never saw him create anything besides this one time. The other things I noticed were his handwriting, and I suppose you could say that was a daily creation. How he signed his name. Randall B. McBeth. Artful, bold, pronounced. An artist.

A map.

I now know that’s why I noticed how Ben signed his name on our first date, with his kind handwriting, if handwriting can be called kind. Benjamin W. Ryan. His full, formal name.

My Dad was bad at small talk, much less checking up on us on the daily, but the biggest decisions in my life were made with him. I would say that, absolutely, these decisions were a full fledged collaboration; teamwork, if there ever was; two of my favorite memories, two of the greatest nights of my entire life, and two of the best things I ever did.

1.     Together, we created a matrix—a rubric—to decide where I went to school. I was really lost on this decision, because I had significant scholarships at some places but wasn’t sure those places were my destiny. I didn’t even know what I wanted to be. My Dad encouraged me—but did not give the words to me—to create the criteria. Then, I assigned a number to each category for each school and ranked them. Fate took a slightly unexpected turn to Rice. And nearly 30 years later, those memories are still what mold me, and those people are still my lifelong best friends. The. Best. Almost no one can make me laugh as hard as these misfits do. Almost no one has impressed me as much with how they’re loving each other and changing the world.

2.     And then there’s the story of Ben. My Dad befriended Ben at our friend’s rehearsal dinner and then introduced us, even though we’d already met. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The important point here is that Ben was chosen for me by my Dad. Not in an arranged marriage kind of way, but in a way that was absolutely supernatural. The rest is history.

Somehow, my Dad empowered me in every major decision I made, no matter how much it must have exhausted him, no matter if he didn’t fully approve—sometimes, despite the fact that he categorically did not approve. With every new decision I made for college and my career, he moved me every single time, everywhere, until he couldn’t, even when I was on my bachelorette party and not even there. He put his stamp on all my homes. This is the first home he couldn’t help me move into. This is the first home he’ll never get to see. But he is here, and by God, it feels always—daily—as if he is with me and that he is always seeing it.

Writing this blog has turned into an archaeological and sociological survey of what I learned, how I learned it, and why it is important. In community, we are raising and protecting each other. Family, friends, neighbors, citizens. We are responsible for each other. Especially the vulnerable ones. And the ones without Grandfathers. My boys will grow up differently than I did. We will use what we have and teach from there, and parent from there, and live from there. Our children are our lighthouses, and their questions light the way and deserve to be answered. They can’t be answered directly by their Grandfathers, so we ourselves will have to find the way.

Were you in California when you lost the baby?

My Grandmother asks this point blank as we sit at her kitchen table. It is fall 2013. My grandfathers are dead.

The Baby.

This was the miscarriage I had before Walker. My grandfathers didn’t get to meet any of my babies. I had sat next to Ralph that January at Elston’s funeral. After the service, I walked with him, because I think I was clinging to him, to the exit doors of the First Baptist Church and waited with him as he sat down, gasping for breath, before he walked to his car. I remember thinking this was significant. One month later, he was gone. But when I lost the baby in Berkley, California, after they passed, I could feel them in the room with me, holding my hands.

“If I could go back in time, I’d tell them my grandpa died before I was born.”

Jackson utters these words matter-of-factly as we watch LION KING 1 ½. The plot has something to do with the characters going back in time, and I have to look this up to tell you what it is, because after Jackson said that, I wasn’t paying attention to the movie.

Google AI: The Lion King 1½ (also known as The Lion King 3: Hakuna Matata) is a 2004 Disney animated film that retells the story of the original Lion King from the perspective of Timon and Pumbaa, showing how they met, their adventures, and their role during the events of the first movie, essentially acting as a prequel/midquel/sidequel that fills in gaps and provides a humorous backstory. 

Jackson is now seven years old, and as I discovered last year, he is consumed with thoughts of his grandfathers. He tells another child one day that he doesn’t really have any. He tells me he is sad because his friends’ grandparents are at school pick up. Grandfathers attend the Christmas Sing. They drop their grandkids off in the mornings. They enter the building while holding their hands. They go on vacations together and eat dinners and roast hot dogs up at the lake. They wear flannel. They smell musky. They drive trucks and sedans. Jackson knows what all the grandfathers drive, because Jackson knows cars. He knows his grandfather Randy used to love cars but can no longer drive them.

There were a lot of things Randy thought he could not do throughout his life, but he now realizes it was because he would not will himself to do them. Because now, he truly cannot do them. And yet, for five years as an invalid after the stroke, he’s willed himself to live.

            I think it’s because he’s realized he really does have a Wonderful Life.

            I think it’s because we are McBeths, and they do not give up.

            I think it’s because we are Golsons, and they don’t either.

            I think it’s because my sons are Ryans, who worked hard for what they built. And I think my Dad wants to stick around to see what happens with this family, because it holds the realization of and potential for so many dreams.

I have to take what’s right in front of me and work with it. I have to use what I’ve been given and teach from there. I have to teach myself to teach my kids with whatever I have. So much of what I’ve learned from my Dad has been from silently watching his tight grip on life keep us safe. His OCD kept us safe…the control, the protection. I think it kind of did. He had a routine, a system. Sitting, smoking, thinking, watching. Observing, analyzing, reviewing. All the details that needed to be handled. The doors that needed to be locked. The lights that needed to be turned off. The line items on the bills to be removed, the fringe on the rugs to be combed, the cars to be parked in a perfect line, the tie on his shirt to be straightened, his mustache to be combed, not a single hair astray. His OCD kept his depression in check. Thank God for It. The OCD and my Mom keep him alive today.

His words. What a great country.

I did not know my father-in-law Jim for as long as I would have liked, six years only. There was the time when Ben insisted we fly from Texas to Wisconsin so his family could meet seven week old Walker, even though I had a pretty serious respiratory infection. Cough after cough after cough, and all of this while I was, for the first time, mothering and nursing. Ben was so excited to show his son to his family that when Jim picked us up at the Chicago airport, Ben didn’t want to stop at the pharmacy to get some over the counter drugs, which I clearly needed.

But Jim told him to stop. So he did.

I nursed Walker as I coughed relentlessly in the back of the Buick, while Jim sat quietly in the front, and Ben ran in.

There was another time, right after my grandfathers died, when I couldn’t stop crying at the dinner table. Someone said something unkind to me. Tone deaf, cruelty, probably not unintentionally. He raised his hand from the table and placed it over my hand.

There was a long time after he died when I wondered if kindness was gone with him. The checks and balances. The goodwill. The magnanimous nature. And certainly, the enduring guidance on how to be a good husband and father for Ben. My Dad could never fill that role but what he did do was show Ben how much he loved me and that my family would stick around. What Jim did do was show up in our lives in various ways, and as no less than a guardian angel. And I know this because one day, I crossed paths with my mother-in-law three times: 1. On a walk with a friend in the morning, 2. Driving right behind her as I exited the freeway in the afternoon—her coming from Green Lake and me from Madison, and 3. Driving on Parker to dinner downtown as she walked home. He wanted us to be together. That was 100% Jim. And I bet he thought it was pretty funny. In life, we get through the hard things by making them funny.

JACKSON: I like to eat by myself and play by myself at recess. Do you know why?

ME: No. You don’t like the other kids?

JACKSON: I like almost everyone. They’re nice. It’s something that happened in 2016.

ME: Uh….Trump? (I have no idea where this is going.)

JACKSON: Grandpa Jim died. (It really was a shitty year.)

ME: Oh wow. Do you feel like when you’re alone at lunch and recess, he’s with you?

JACKSON: Sometimes.

Jackson can be a rebellious child, but it’s more that he is extremely clear on what he wants and who he is. He says and does things my brother and I could never ever do, nor that my oldest two sons would ever do. It’s probably actually an outward manifestation of all of our insides. Be loud. Open doors wide. Climb on furniture. Speak honestly from the heart about feelings and thoughts and demand to heard and treated as significant. Jackson does not walk on eggshells. And if you tell him to tread lightly, he often doubles down. If a concrete force is trying to stifle him, he’ll become water, seep through the cracks, and burst forth. He is so sensitive but so confident, because he knows. He’s knows he’s smart. And he knows. It’s as if he is the physical manifestation of our internal struggles, our moods, our challenges—and also the sweetest, kindest, most deeply feeling and in tune little kid. He is so loving and nurturing and thoughtful. On Saturday, he turned seven, so we had a slumber party last night. Yesterday morning, I woke up with his arms around me and his little body snuggled into mine. I don’t think life gets better than this. I believe that these tender, special moments are the physical manifestation of who we are at our best. It’s interesting, then, to consider the iterations of my father, to me, to my sons. How divergent, how alike. How my favorite, most sacred and treasured memories of my childhood and the ones when I felt closest to my parents, and now I’m seeing these same things played out with my kids. Evolutions and revolutions of our bloodline marching…tumbling…crumbling…and then merging, converging, and mending back together again. Together, stronger than ever. Charging forth.

I think what we always knew is that my parents loved each other. It was and continues to be a real, enduring love, and they taught us what they understood: That life is a journey, not a single story arc; but a series of novels with immeasurable ups and downs.

Agnes: When you grow up, you can tell me whatever. Like, if you have a thought, and you’re like, “that’s a bad thought,” I probably had that same thought but, like, ten times worse. So you can just tell me, I’ll never be scared by that. If someone does something bad to you. If someone says something scary. If you wanna kill yourself, like with a pencil or a knife or whatever, you can just tell me. I’ll never tell you you’re scaring me. I’ll just say, “Yeah, I know. It’s just like that sometimes.” I’m sorry that bad things are going to happen to you. I hope they don’t. If I can’t ever stop something from being bad, let me know. But, sometimes, bad stuff just happens. That’s why I feel bad for you in a way. That you’re alive, and you don’t know that yet. But I can still listen, and not be scared. So that’s good, or that’s something, at least.

--From the film SORRY, BABY / written & directed by and starring Eva Victor

If my Dad could have articulated his thoughts while I was young, maybe he would have told me something like this. It is certainly what I always needed to hear: an acknowledgement of being seen and an acceptance of messy mistakes, imperfections, and darkness. But even though I never got those words from him, I have them for myself now, and for my children. I think it is exactly what he would want. And exactly what he would have wanted to hear as a boy himself.

The other thing I believe my Dad would tell me is that it’s OK if I take the good things I learned from my upbringing, and I leave behind the things we don’t need.

It’s OK.

It’s OK.

It’s not being disloyal. It doesn’t mean I’m abandoning my family. It’s OK.

My sons’ grandfather would want me to do this for his grandsons. And for myself. For my protection. A mother is not singular, but one who embodies and nurtures another, plural. The heart is now outside of the body. Two hearts, and the mother in both. The self, the selfish, gone. Alone no longer. More. The protector. The storyteller. And along with their father, I will make sure they know their grandfathers. We embody and pass on their best parts. Ben truly does this. My boys may not have an active grandfather, but they have one heck of a Dad. It’s why I married Ben, one of the most defining reasons. I guess I knew he would be the one to fill the cracks.

And so will my boys.

*

There would be a day when one of our wedding China plates would shatter, and Reeves would swiftly snatch up the pieces and put the plate back together. We’d seal it like Kintsugi.

*

There would be a night when a drawer would fall on my foot and nearly break it, and Jackson would tell me to lay across his lap, and he’d hold me while I was weeping.

*

And there would be an afternoon when Walker, a mere toddler who could have had no inkling of this terrible truth, would lay silently across my stomach for ages after I lost The Baby.

*

Protection. Connection. Us and them, them and us, together forever and for each other always.

The first photograph we have of Reeves and Jim is the last photograph we have of Jim. A tiny little five-week-old baby’s hand wrapped around his wise and wonderful grandfather’s finger. In our hearts, his hand is still wrapped around Jim’s finger. And it always shall be.

Me, as a little girl holding my father’s hand. Holding my grandfather’s hands.

My boys, holding my hands, and holding Ben’s hands. Holding their grandmother’s, and holding their grandfather’s hands.

We’re listening to “Airplanes” by one of my favorite bands, Local Natives, which I quoted at the beginning of this essay. Jackson is very musical. The notes have a physical response in him…a bodily representation. He can feel the music. He wants to touch it, to see it.

JACKSON: What does the song look like?

ME: You. It looks like you. Bursting through, in spite of this life.

As the song goes, one day, my boys will finally leave their bodies for the sky and meet their grandfathers once again. They’ll realize then—that what they already are now—is in many ways just like their grandfathers. Authentically them. And once again, they’ll join hands.

The wait will be worth it.