Today, me, my dad, and my brother went to see my grandparents after school. My mother wasn’t going to be home until 7:00 PM and the three of us (my dad, brother, and I) thought it a good idea to go have lunch with my grandparents rather than eat at home alone.
We arrived at my grandparents’ place at around 3:50 PM. They spent a good twenty minutes setting up the table while my brother and I waited in agony to eat, every time it seemed they were finished they remembered that they needed to add something else, the wait time was excruciating, but after a lot of pleas from my dad, brother, and I, they finally sat down.
Conversation began smoothly, my brother shared his newfound mission to switch his school’s scheduling system to block scheduling, I shared my 100% A grade in a college course that I’d recently completed, and my father informed my grandparents about our summer plans to travel. Everything seemed to be going well until it wasn’t. A disagreement about family handling seemed to set the conversation aflame. It wasn’t an argument per se, but rather an incredibly loud disagreement that lasted for the remainder of the time we were there. I sat in silence and watched as my father and grandmother went back and forth, each time with their voices getting louder. My grandpa and my brother would sometimes try to intervene but their efforts were in vain.
lf I’m being quite honest, the incident didn’t bother me at all. I found it rather calming in a strange way. It reassured me of the mutual love between my dad and his parents.
People who love each other argue, people who don’t simply walk away.
I learned a lot of familial history during this incident that I hadn’t previously known. I found myself sitting at that table wondering if I was ever going to be able to capture it all down on paper. A few days ago I wrote about how I’d bought my grandpa a journal filled with prompts in it in order to help aid him in recording his life’s journey, today I found myself wondering whether this was truly a possibility. There’s just so much I don’t know that I doubt I’ll ever find out. The lives of my grandparents fascinate me. I want to understand and know everything they’ve been through during their lives, but I’ve come to believe that it may be impossible for me to ever obtain that knowledge in any form. This realization is a depressing one. In some way I believed that I was going to be able to write it all down, (their stories) I thought that I could preserve their lives and existence within my words, but today I know that was a wild fantasy that was never going to come true. Nobody wants to recall their darkest moments or think back to their worst decisions, people want to tell you their stories of victory. But no one wants to remember a time in which they were simply defeated.
I sat at that table today watching as my grandma and dad debated back and forth and realized that no matter how hard I tried I would never know my grandparents’ entire life story. There are things that I’m never going to know and that fact repulses me. I want to have known my grandparents in all stages of their lives and understand their way of thinking at each stage, yet this dream is the definition of impossible. My grandparents often reminisce about the good old days but I’ll never understand what those days were like no matter how much I ask or how much I write.
Today, I learned something important, and despite my disappointment, I’m going to keep trying anyway. Both of my grandparents have a story, and I want to write down as much of it as I can even if it’ll never be a completed work.
— March
We arrived at my grandparents’ place at around 3:50 PM. They spent a good twenty minutes setting up the table while my brother and I waited in agony to eat, every time it seemed they were finished they remembered that they needed to add something else, the wait time was excruciating, but after a lot of pleas from my dad, brother, and I, they finally sat down.
Conversation began smoothly, my brother shared his newfound mission to switch his school’s scheduling system to block scheduling, I shared my 100% A grade in a college course that I’d recently completed, and my father informed my grandparents about our summer plans to travel. Everything seemed to be going well until it wasn’t. A disagreement about family handling seemed to set the conversation aflame. It wasn’t an argument per se, but rather an incredibly loud disagreement that lasted for the remainder of the time we were there. I sat in silence and watched as my father and grandmother went back and forth, each time with their voices getting louder. My grandpa and my brother would sometimes try to intervene but their efforts were in vain.
lf I’m being quite honest, the incident didn’t bother me at all. I found it rather calming in a strange way. It reassured me of the mutual love between my dad and his parents.
People who love each other argue, people who don’t simply walk away.
I learned a lot of familial history during this incident that I hadn’t previously known. I found myself sitting at that table wondering if I was ever going to be able to capture it all down on paper. A few days ago I wrote about how I’d bought my grandpa a journal filled with prompts in it in order to help aid him in recording his life’s journey, today I found myself wondering whether this was truly a possibility. There’s just so much I don’t know that I doubt I’ll ever find out. The lives of my grandparents fascinate me. I want to understand and know everything they’ve been through during their lives, but I’ve come to believe that it may be impossible for me to ever obtain that knowledge in any form. This realization is a depressing one. In some way I believed that I was going to be able to write it all down, (their stories) I thought that I could preserve their lives and existence within my words, but today I know that was a wild fantasy that was never going to come true. Nobody wants to recall their darkest moments or think back to their worst decisions, people want to tell you their stories of victory. But no one wants to remember a time in which they were simply defeated.
I sat at that table today watching as my grandma and dad debated back and forth and realized that no matter how hard I tried I would never know my grandparents’ entire life story. There are things that I’m never going to know and that fact repulses me. I want to have known my grandparents in all stages of their lives and understand their way of thinking at each stage, yet this dream is the definition of impossible. My grandparents often reminisce about the good old days but I’ll never understand what those days were like no matter how much I ask or how much I write.
Today, I learned something important, and despite my disappointment, I’m going to keep trying anyway. Both of my grandparents have a story, and I want to write down as much of it as I can even if it’ll never be a completed work.
— March
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