For My Grandpa & My Son: A Collage Essay

The House My Grandpa Built

I’m in fifth grade and I have to write a biography of someone I admire. My grandma is my first choice. I send her a list of questions and she responds to each one in her loopy cursive handwriting on yellow lined legal paper. She tells me of growing up with her six siblings, of her mom dying when she was just 16, of her handsome high school sweetheart who she married right after graduation. She tells me of their young love, of her first daughter (my mom) being born, and of her husband spending the weekends building a home where they would raise their four children.

After reading about the house, I put down the legal paper and go clarify something with my mom. I walk into the kitchen where she is making dinner and ask, “Mom, did Grandpa build the house they still live in?”

“He did. We moved into that house when I was in elementary school.”

I spent every Christmas in that large tan house with a front window perfectly framing their Christmas tree until I was an adult. I gathered with my family on the floral couch, stealing a few M&Ms from the decorative bowl on the coffee table between opening gifts. I spent hours around the kitchen table playing card games with my aunts and uncles and cousins next to the large hutch of Precious Moments figurines. I hunted for Easter eggs in the backyard that covered almost an acre and played horse shoes in the pit along the back fence. I stayed in the small bedroom upstairs for a week in high school so I could attend basketball camp with a friend, falling asleep each night in the same room my mom fell asleep in when she was in high school. I played pool in the room downstairs that had carpeted walls and an antique jukebox in the corner that still worked.

Every closet was packed to the brim with memories my grandparents couldn’t bear to let go of. When we stayed there, I could always find some treasure that had a story my grandparents or mom or her siblings could tell me about.

My grandpa built the house all by himself, but he invited everyone he loved to keep building memories inside of it.

A Curious Mind

I’m in Las Vegas with my family, visiting my grandparents during spring break. Before driving to their house an hour outside the city, we decide to spend a day looking at all the opulent hotels and trying out the new roller coaster on the top of the Stratosphere.

As we navigate the crowds, I realize we’ve lost my grandpa.

“Mom, where’s grandpa? He’s not with us anymore.”

She smiles, knowing exactly where we’ve lost her dad. “Come on”, she tells me.

We turn around and start retracing our steps. After a few minutes, we’re back near the construction site we had just passed and my mom points. “See, he’s just figuring out how this building is going up.”

I look through the crowd to find my grandpa in conversation with one of the construction workers. He is shielding his eyes and looking into the sky in wonder where the new building is being constructed.

“He’s always been curious about the way things are built. Do you remember those old typewriters he used to bring to you and your brother? He would spend hours sitting with Brian in the garage, screwdrivers in hand, disassembling them to see how they were built. This is just a bigger version of that.”

Super Powers

My daughter is one month old, dressed in light pink fleece heart pajamas on a rainy January morning in 2013. She is tucked into my grandpa’s arms while he sits in the rocking chair in the corner of her lavender painted nursery. My mom reminded me that when I was born, my grandpa was the first person to hold me in the hospital room after my mom and dad. Now he has driven almost 600 miles with my grandma to meet their first great-grandchild. I don’t think he notices me watching him from the doorway. Norah is sleeping peacefully while he reads to her from The Paper Bag Princess board book. I am certain she feels perfectly safe and immensely loved in his arms. It’s impossible not to feel that way when my grandpa holds you. I snap a quick photo and walk back to the living room to let them have some time alone.

After a half hour or so, Norah wakes up and starts to fuss. She’s hungry.

“Hey grandpa, why don’t I feed her while you grab some lunch yourself,” I say. He reluctantly hands her over to me and smiles.

“She’s so beautiful, Jodie.”

“Thank you,” I say. I know she will always feel beautiful when he looks at her. I know because it’s the way I have always felt when he looks at me.

I settle into the chair and pull Norah to me to nurse. Her newborn scent now mingles with the faint scent of my grandpa, and it is a perfect mix.

My grandpa shuts the door to the nursery to give me privacy and joins my grandma, my parents and my husband around our dining room table for lunch. The muffled conversation comes through the door and I think I hear my grandpa ask for our tool box.

A few minutes later, Brett comes into the nursery and holds up his phone for me to see the photo he has just taken: my grandpa, on his back, underneath our kitchen table. He felt the table’s slightly loosened leg and knew he could help. The leg had been loose as long as we had owned the hand-me-down table and I had never considered making it better. But my grandpa did. He’s smiling in the photo.

He rocks an infant to sleep in his strong arms one minute, and jumps in to help fix something that is broken the next. He can make people feel both safe and taken care of all at once. Superheroes do that, too.

A Face Used to Smiling

Norah is three or four and we are visiting my grandparents for Christmas. We walk in the door of their house and are greeted with big hugs.

“How are you?” I ask my grandpa.

“Oh good!” he answers, already smiling and squeezing my shoulders a little tighter. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him answer any differently.

Norah looks in her bag and proudly shows my grandpa the binoculars she has made out of toilet paper rolls, glue, stickers, and string.

“Wow! They look just like mine!” He forms his hands into circles and places them over his eyes, bending down close to Norah’s small face while they gaze at one another.

She lowers her binoculars and giggles. “You’re so silly grandpa!”

“These aren’t silly! This is very serious!” he says, with a hint of a laugh underneath his words.

From that day forward, he wears the title “Silly Grampa” and the two of them don their binoculars every time they greet each other. A few years later, he will claim he can’t find his binoculars while playing a game of “Go Fish” and that they are very important to the game. So with a straight face (or as straight a face as one can make with a face so used to smiling) he will place Norah’s child size pink goggles over his eyes and play the rest of the round of cards squinting, giggling, and making my daughter feel the same joy I did when I was her age sitting next to him playing games.

A Big Love

Conor runs into my grandparent’s house and immediately finds my grandpa sitting in his rocking chair. He sprints into my Grandpa’s arms and declares, “I missed you!!” As my grandpa stands up, Conor notices the string of a red cellophane balloon above him.

“I pway wif bawoon?!?!”

They bring the balloon to the living room and we take turns lifting Conor to reach the white string as he keeps letting the balloon drift to the ceiling.

“Whose balloon is that?” Norah asks.

My grandpa gets a twinkle in his eye and gives a boyish grin. “I got it for great-grandma for Valentine’s Day.”

When he looks at my grandma I see a glimpse of his 17-year-old self falling head over heels in love with his high school sweetheart. I see a glimpse of him a few years ago, slyly pinching my grandma’s butt when she gets up from the table to serve a second helping of Christmas dinner. I see a glimpse of him on his knees in the hospital chapel, praying for the woman he loves most in the world to make it through her open-heart surgery. I see a glimpse of the two of them holding hands almost everywhere they go, even after decades of walking side by side.

A few days later, I take my grandparents out to dinner, just the three of us. “Why do you think your marriage has always been so strong?” I ask.

“We really like each other’s company. We do everything together,” my grandpa says.

It’s true. It is almost impossible for me to think of a memory of one of them without the other. My grandpa loves our whole family well, but he loves my grandma most. Being in his presence is being in the presence of love.

The Name

It’s Christmas day 2016. Wrapping paper litters the living room of my aunt and uncle’s house. The kitchen bubbles with dinner preparation and laughter. I watch my grandpa move slowly from the large table in the dining room to the couch in the living room. He sits down in the corner of the couch and smiles. I touch my belly, six months round with my growing son, and walk over to my grandpa.

“Can I join you? It’s quiet out here.”

He smiles and pats the couch next to him. I sit down and cozy up close. I place my hands on my belly and lean my head towards his.

“I have something I wanted to tell you. You know we’ve decided to name our son Conor, but we haven’t shared his middle name with anyone yet. We wanted to tell you first.”

He is too humble to anticipate what I’m about to tell him, so I make sure to look right in his eyes so he grasps the weight of what I’m saying.

“His middle name is Nicholas, after you.”

I hear my grandpa inhale deep. I see the tears spring in his eyes. “Really?” he asks. His large hand finds mine and he squeezes it.

“Of course. When we think about the qualities we hope our son has some day, so many of them can be found in you.”

He closes his eyes, still teary. “Thank you”, he says, squeezing my hand tighter. I rest my head on his steady shoulder, breathe in his familiar scent. It is my favorite moment of Christmas this year.

I know that bestowing my grandpa’s name on my son does not magically knit his qualities into my son’s being, but every time I call him Conor Nicholas, it is a reminder for me to pray for these things to rise up in him—his work ethic, curiosity, willingness to help, his joy and optimism, the way he loves with all of who he is.

The House that Conor Built

“Mom, come look what I did!”

“Just a second, bud. Let me get this dinner in the oven and I’ll be right there.”

I quickly wash my hands and dry them on the kitchen towel, then walk around the corner to the living room.

Conor is standing proudly next to a giant Magna Tile structure. “Look at what my brain wanted to build! It’s a house! And it has rooms for everyone!”

He bends down to show me where each of our family members can live inside his creation. There is a room for him, one for Norah, one for me and Brett. His multi-colored Magna-Tile house has everything our small family needs.

“I like the way your brain works, buddy. You think like an engineer. You remind me of Grandpa Nicholas when you build things like this.”

“Yeah, my brain has lots of things it wants to build,” he says, smiling matter of factly.

Conor loves building these structures all by himself, but as soon as he’s finished, he invites everyone he loves to play with his creations, building memories together.

A Curious Mind

The water fills the old clawfoot tub in the bathroom at our cabin. Our century-old sanctuary in the woods has recently been renovated, but the tub looks like it could be close to the original. Conor’s three-year-old body looks so small in the large white tub. As the water rises, I watch Conor’s eyes steady on the faucet and slowly follow the exposed piping up the wall until it disappears in the ceiling.

“Ooooohh! So the water starts there and then comes aaaaalll the way down and around until it comes out here!” He points his small finger along the pipe’s path the whole time. His furrowed brow and curious glint in his eyes is familiar. It’s the same look my grandpa has when he’s following the path of a building’s construction.

Super Powers

I have flown 2,000 miles to visit my parents and grandparents at their winter homes in Nevada with my two children during their mid-winter break from school in February 2022. One afternoon we are sitting around the table at my grandparents house just chatting. During a rare lull in conversation, I pose the super power question, wondering what the answers will be across four generations.

“If you could have any super power, what would it be?”

“I would time travel,” Norah answers. “So I could visit all the people I’ve learned about. And I know yours mom. You would be able to jump into stories, right?”

“That’s right,” I answer. I turn to my parents and grandparents. “We’ve obviously already had this conversation. What about you guys?”

They all take turns answering the question.

My grandpa and Conor are the last two to go. “I think I would like to be able to fly,” my grandpa says. His body is weaker than it has ever been before, and I imagine how freeing it would be for him to just lift off and soar.

“What about you buddy? If you could have any super power, what would it be?” I assume he will answer with something based on one of the Marvel characters he loves. Maybe shoot webs like Spider-Man or soar with an armored suit like Iron Man or have the strength of Thor or Hulk. Instead, he channels the super hero sitting next to him at the table.

“I would be able to fix broken things,” he says. He knows his middle name is Nicholas. He knows he’s named after his great-grandfather sitting next to him. But I don’t know if he realizes he carries the name of a superhero with the powers he most longs for.

A Face Used to Smiling

I walk up to the preschool doors to greet Conor at the end of his day. As soon as he sees me, his eyes light up and he runs to the door.

“Hi buddy! How was your day?”

He answers the same way he does every day, giving me two thumbs up. “Good!” he says, with a hint of a giggle under his breath.

“He is the happiest kid I’ve ever seen,” his teacher says. “He never stops smiling.”

“I know,” I say. And I think to myself, I know exactly where he gets that from.

A Big Love

I am sitting at the playground watching Conor run around with his friends. They are playing happily so I turn back to talking with the other moms. About ten minutes in, I feel a little tug on my shirt.

“Hi Mom! Just need a hug!” Conor says.

I lift him up and squeeze him tight. “Everything okay?” I ask.

“Yep! I just love you SO much!!!”

“I love you too buddy. Thank you for the hug. Why don’t you go back and play with your friends. We need to go pick Norah up in about 15 minutes.”

“No, I think I’ll just sit with you. I just like being with you the most, Mom.”

We find a bench and sit down, side by side. Conor tells me all about the game they were playing and all the things he did at preschool that day. As he talks, I think about how big his love is. It bubbles over until it bursts out into a mid-playdate hug and a snuggle on the bench. His love rubs his sister’s back when she’s sad. His love sprints to the door when Brett gets home from work each day. His love hugs every one of his classmates at the end of each school day. If he loves me this much now, I can only imagine how much he will love the person he marries if he chooses to marry. Being in his presence is being in the presence of love.

The Legacy

It’s February 2022. Norah and Conor are telling my grandma stories about fourth grade and PreK at her kitchen table. My dad helps my grandpa to the couch, settling him in with his walker still within reach. I find a spot next to him and cozy up close.

He asks me about the kids and the city and Brett and how we’re all doing. Then he puts his large hand on mine. His skin is soft and while his hand is the same size it’s always been, it feels smaller.

“You know, Jodie, the doctors have told me I have Alzheimers. It’s really hard to hear that.”

“I know, Grandpa. It is hard.” Now I’m the one with tears in my eyes.

He takes a deep breath. “Grandma takes such good care of me though. I just feel so lucky to have her.”

I look to the dining room where Norah and Conor are fighting for my grandma’s attention. She is doing her best to follow both of their stories, smiling and nodding along with them.

I squeeze my grandpa’s hand. “You’re both lucky to have each other. And we’re all really lucky to have you both, Grandpa.”

***

As Conor grows and gets stronger, becoming more of who he is, my grandpa is getting weaker, and we are losing him little by little. He is forced to accept help doing most tasks and he gets confused easily, but his sense of humor and big love remain intact. I don’t know if there will come a day when he no longer remembers us when we see him. But I do know that when he looks at Conor Nicholas, he’ll be seeing part of himself again.