Thank You Grandma Written By: Niki Ishikawa
"Good thing they're not dead yet. I would be super sad. I would cry my whole heart out."
The words Captain Awesome speaks stop my own heart. He just turned six years old, yet the way he sees, hears, and feels the world around him astounds me. He's talking about his grandparents, my parents. He misses them. After their visits, there is this emptiness, this void we all feel. It always seems to hit him at night, when he's climbing into bed and I'm giving him one last hug and kiss goodnight. The feeling of sadness over their absence, overwhelms him and often he will cry and through sniffles and tears will tell me how much he misses them. This particular night, like many nights, I told him that it is okay to be sad and miss them. I also wanted him to know that we are very lucky that we can call them on FaceTime and see them.
"When I was a kid, we didn't have FaceTime. We had a home telephone that you could talk on, but not see people." His teary hazel eyes look up at me with bewilderment. He can't fathom not being able to see somebody while talking to them on the phone. I continue, "We also had to pay for something called long distance, which cost more money to call people who lived far away, so conversations were usually short and that meant we didn't get to call my grandparents that often. I couldn't call and see them whenever I wanted. But you sir, you can call your grandparents any time you want and you can see them too."
His tears have disappeared now that he's learning how much different life was when I was a kid. I then tell him we can also write letters to his grandparents and hopefully we can go visit them soon. That's when he said the opening statement to this blog post. I'm stopped by his words, not just from the bluntness of the dead part, but also the honesty and vulnerability of his crying his whole heart out.
Captain Awesome's brutal honesty immediately makes me think of my own grandma, who he called, "Great Gram". This week marks a year since she passed away and her 96th birthday would have been today, if she were still living. While I miss her presence and wish to have one last conversation with her over coffee and her homemade cookies, I do somehow feel closer to her now than I ever did. If that makes any sense at all? Maybe it's because when my grandma was alive, we always lived in different states and only saw each other occasionally. Though we always kept in touch through "snail mail" as she called it. Now that she has passed on I feel like she is always with me, guiding me in being the woman that I am today. I hear her gentle reminders of how a house should be kept while I'm cleaning. I hear her compliments on my clothes that I know she would have loved. I feel her with me when I am baking and sewing, the pride in her creative work pulsing through my veins. More and more I find myself drawn to things that she loved, the music, the performance arts, creating perfect things with my hands whether from food or cloth. Lately, I also can't help but enjoy a Coca-Cola classic without thinking of my beloved grandma.
On my mom's last visit to our home, she brought the one thing I cherished and wanted from my grandma's house. Even though I wanted it so badly, I had forgotten that my mom brought it to my house. When she arrived with it, I was so caught up with preparing for the boys' birthday party and Thanksgiving. I had honestly forgotten about it. I had set the bag of goodies my mom brought aside for safe keeping in our storage room.
The day before the anniversary of my grandma's death, something drew me into the office were I had moved the bag of goodies when I brought it in with the Christmas decorations. I sat down on the futon and unloaded the reusable World Market shopping bag. It wasn't until I got to the bottom of the bag after pulling out multiple Christmas cookbooks a couple boxes of Christmas glassware, that I remembered the treasured recipe box.
My grandma's recipe box, a perfect example of her neat, organization. It is full of 100s of her recipes along with her friends and family recipes that she loved enough to ask for their recipe. Many of the recipes are written in her handwriting a comfort for me to see, but some were written by friends and other family members including my mom too. I sat there for awhile looking through the various recipes and newspaper clippings of helpful household hints that she had cut and pasted onto index cards. I got lost in her world for awhile and I cried a little bit too, but it was a good cry. A thankful cry. I was so grateful to be able to keep that part of my grandma with me. Now I can make the dishes she loved and baked. And my favorite part, she even left me a sample of the wallpaper in her kitchen, tucked in the way back of the box, with her writing on the back and a hand drawn arrow that said, "top". Just another treasured memory of my home away from home, her kitchen.
The words Captain Awesome speaks stop my own heart. He just turned six years old, yet the way he sees, hears, and feels the world around him astounds me. He's talking about his grandparents, my parents. He misses them. After their visits, there is this emptiness, this void we all feel. It always seems to hit him at night, when he's climbing into bed and I'm giving him one last hug and kiss goodnight. The feeling of sadness over their absence, overwhelms him and often he will cry and through sniffles and tears will tell me how much he misses them. This particular night, like many nights, I told him that it is okay to be sad and miss them. I also wanted him to know that we are very lucky that we can call them on FaceTime and see them.
"When I was a kid, we didn't have FaceTime. We had a home telephone that you could talk on, but not see people." His teary hazel eyes look up at me with bewilderment. He can't fathom not being able to see somebody while talking to them on the phone. I continue, "We also had to pay for something called long distance, which cost more money to call people who lived far away, so conversations were usually short and that meant we didn't get to call my grandparents that often. I couldn't call and see them whenever I wanted. But you sir, you can call your grandparents any time you want and you can see them too."
His tears have disappeared now that he's learning how much different life was when I was a kid. I then tell him we can also write letters to his grandparents and hopefully we can go visit them soon. That's when he said the opening statement to this blog post. I'm stopped by his words, not just from the bluntness of the dead part, but also the honesty and vulnerability of his crying his whole heart out.
Captain Awesome's brutal honesty immediately makes me think of my own grandma, who he called, "Great Gram". This week marks a year since she passed away and her 96th birthday would have been today, if she were still living. While I miss her presence and wish to have one last conversation with her over coffee and her homemade cookies, I do somehow feel closer to her now than I ever did. If that makes any sense at all? Maybe it's because when my grandma was alive, we always lived in different states and only saw each other occasionally. Though we always kept in touch through "snail mail" as she called it. Now that she has passed on I feel like she is always with me, guiding me in being the woman that I am today. I hear her gentle reminders of how a house should be kept while I'm cleaning. I hear her compliments on my clothes that I know she would have loved. I feel her with me when I am baking and sewing, the pride in her creative work pulsing through my veins. More and more I find myself drawn to things that she loved, the music, the performance arts, creating perfect things with my hands whether from food or cloth. Lately, I also can't help but enjoy a Coca-Cola classic without thinking of my beloved grandma.
On my mom's last visit to our home, she brought the one thing I cherished and wanted from my grandma's house. Even though I wanted it so badly, I had forgotten that my mom brought it to my house. When she arrived with it, I was so caught up with preparing for the boys' birthday party and Thanksgiving. I had honestly forgotten about it. I had set the bag of goodies my mom brought aside for safe keeping in our storage room.
The day before the anniversary of my grandma's death, something drew me into the office were I had moved the bag of goodies when I brought it in with the Christmas decorations. I sat down on the futon and unloaded the reusable World Market shopping bag. It wasn't until I got to the bottom of the bag after pulling out multiple Christmas cookbooks a couple boxes of Christmas glassware, that I remembered the treasured recipe box.
My grandma's recipe box, a perfect example of her neat, organization. It is full of 100s of her recipes along with her friends and family recipes that she loved enough to ask for their recipe. Many of the recipes are written in her handwriting a comfort for me to see, but some were written by friends and other family members including my mom too. I sat there for awhile looking through the various recipes and newspaper clippings of helpful household hints that she had cut and pasted onto index cards. I got lost in her world for awhile and I cried a little bit too, but it was a good cry. A thankful cry. I was so grateful to be able to keep that part of my grandma with me. Now I can make the dishes she loved and baked. And my favorite part, she even left me a sample of the wallpaper in her kitchen, tucked in the way back of the box, with her writing on the back and a hand drawn arrow that said, "top". Just another treasured memory of my home away from home, her kitchen.
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