ElementalMom

Grandpa Gagan’s birthday is today.

He died when I was 17. And never a year goes by that I do not make my way to the sea on this day. On years where I’m pressed for time, I throw in flowers. In years where I can, I bake his favorite cake, the truly ghastly applesauce spice cake with chocolate icing, and I heave it ceremoniously into the sea for him.

This year is hitting me hard. There are so very many things I want to talk to him about. I think he would have adored his grandchildren, especially Aurora, who is the first female child in the family since me. I think he would have loved the boat, and I think he would have been pleased to know that I was taking my kids back to the place where he took me when I was their age, to learn to freedive in the warm, clear waters of Baja. I think he’d like Jason, and I’m pretty sure Jason would have thought the world of him.

I think about him every single time we sail out under the Golden Gate Bridge. When I was 9 or 10, I don’t remember really which, he brought me to San Francisco with him, to watch five operas in four days at the San Francisco Opera. I learned a lot of things on that trip, but the highlight for me (other than the moment where I discovered that he’d fallen asleep in Boris Gudnov) was the point where he proposed that we walk across the bridge and back. I thought it was fantastic. He later told me that I was the only girl in his life who had ever been willing to do that with him (Grandpa had abysmal taste in women). I think he’d be proud to know that I’ve taken his little foray into being intrepid and gone a few steps further. I think he’d be pleased that “Che gelida manina” still makes me sob like a baby every time I hear it.

I‘m sad that he won’t be in the boys’ life. Due to age and circumstance, I think they were shorted in the grandfather department. My biological father is long dead, Jason’s died right before Rowan turned 1. The Bear is very sick and thoroughly crabby, which basically leaves the ball in Grandpa Allen and Grandpa Charlie’s courts, and they’re in Oregon and Mississippi, respectively. It makes me sad that my kids aren’t going to have the experience I did, of knowing that no matter what, there was someone indomitable popping into your life every few days to check in.

I miss his advice. He only ever gave one piece, no matter what you asked him about. It could be money, food, love, whatever, and he would look at you seriously and say “First, decide what makes you happy. And then, do it.” The older I get, the more wise that seems. I use it a lot, and I have started giving it a lot too. And the youth I use it on are as annoyed with me as I was with him, thinking him glib and nonspecific. I wish he was alive, so that I could say “Grandpa… I finally get it.”

He established the tradition of enchiladas on St. Patrick’s Day, waldorf salad at Thanksgiving, and lasagne on Christmas Eve. He was very much a “food is love” guy, and twenty-three years later, longer gone to me than he was here with me, I still think of him, and still follow his traditions. Including the immediate making of the bed every morning. He had a thing about unmade beds, and right up until I started getting out of bed and leaving small sleeping children behind me, I’d get up, make the bed, and say “Good morning, Grandpa!”

I‘ve lost track of how old he’d have been. I like to think of him as somehow immortal and beneficent, sitting in the afterworld with a soupbowl sized cup of coffee and a newspaper, comfortable as he always was, with the smell of something bubbling away in the oven surrounding him always. That’s the picture that I paint of him, to my boys.

So happy birthday, Grandpa. And as many more as I’m alive to mark them for you.

Related posts:

1. Happy Anniversary
2. Deadbeat Mom Club
3. Grandpa’s Dolls

Tags: advice, Family, Musings