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A Teenage Grandson’s Visit to Grandpa, and I’m There Too

One of the few ways I can get my 16-year-old son to visit my 92-year old dad is for us to swing by Dad's on the way to Julian's annual check-up in the same neighborhood. The last time they saw each other was Christmas, and now it's mid-June and Dad's 92nd birthday. I had bought some brownie bites, and a card with a big footprint next to a little footprint in the sand. Poor Dad always got a combo birthday/Father's Day card, as they're a few days apart. Julian doesn't love being there because it's boring in many ways, but he's a good sport and comes along without complaint.

     We walk into Dad’s apartment and say hi to Dad’s caregiver. My dad is asleep in his wheelchair, with a towel pinned around his neck from lunchtime. He’s very thin, and looks small and frail. We say happy birthday - Julian has a generous smile on his face which is real and for my dad. Dad smiles back, and I wonder if my dad truly knows who it is. After all, grandkids grow fast, and their image is constantly shifting. Julian has a little summer beard, his first one ever. The TV is on, something interesting but violent that the caregiver chose. I lean down and kiss Daddy’s bald head and cheeks. I rub his back. I like to communicate this way, since talking is kind of secondary now. Dad is of few words these days; they’re mostly out of reach except “I love you.” (I’m lucky.) I wonder if Julian can remember that my dad used to be garrulous. You couldn’t stop him.

     My sister pointed out the other day that our Dad’s outgoing answering machine-message is the voice of the dad we used to know, sure of his words. He probably recorded it a decade ago.

     I ask the caregiver if we can change the channel to Turner Classic Movies, Dad’s favorite. A Tab Hunter movie is on, in which he fights with a very young Tommy Lee Jones while…what’s his name?.. that familiar face…with that nose…he used to play a police officer…looks on from the back seat of a car.*

     I want my son and father to engage more, but it’s like there’s a hard clear wall between them. It’s not anybody’s fault. Maybe it’s enough that they are sitting in the same room. 

     Julian eats a brownie bite, and I feed one to Dad. The next movie comes on and it’s Cold Turkey with Dick Van Dyke, about a small town that tries to quit smoking for prize money. I say in Dad’s good ear, “Remember you took us as kids to see this movie in the theater when it came out?” And then I play the game that Dad and I used to play, naming all the character actors as they appear, though I’m the only one playing now. Julian is impressed as I rattle off Jean Stapleton, Tom Poston, Vincent Gardenia, straight-man Bob Newhart, and all these 1970s actors who are no longer around, except for good ol’ Bob Newhart and the wonderful Dick Van Dyke who are in their 90s, even older than Dad. Their being still alive gives me some kind of hope…for what? Just hope.

     Oh, God. Is this what it’s come to, showing off my knowledge of 1970s character actors to my teenage son?

     I go and get a photo of my heavy-set dad holding my infant son, and then say to Dad, “Look. You used to carry Julian,” so proud of how tall and broad-shouldered my son has become.

     “Julian is on the tennis team,” I say every time. Dad used to be an avid tennis player. “And he’s interested in real estate, your old career.” I wish he could tell him all the stories he told me about trying to sell plots of land in the Antelope Valley in the ‘80s, all the tricks of the trade. I had heard them so often, as he loved to talk about his job…how he could turn a “no” into a “yes,” sealing the deal. But those are locked away now.

      One day, I will recede from the world like Dad has. How strange not to be able to read your mail anymore, talk to neighbors, walk around the block. At his age, maybe he’s tired and glad not to have to do these things, so he can rest.

     I don’t think twice about being part of the world…driving, taking elevators to doctors, reading newspapers, paying bills, while I’ve watched my dad slowly ebb from life outside until he can only see it framed by TV, or hear our watered-down news as we enter his place. He doesn’t need to know that there’s a pandemic out there (he’s safe) or that there recently were days of protests and uprisings in our neighborhoods after another black man was asphyxiated by a cop with his hands smugly in his pockets.

     My dad has seen it all…does he really need to hear the news? He saw people starving in the Great Depression, he witnessed world wars, the Civil Rights Movement, assassinations of great men, even 9/11. Just know, as I do, that he can’t handle that much these days, and give him simple love.

     Julian has seen a lot too, and he’s only been on this planet for 16 years. He knows so much more than when I was safely sitting in dark movie theaters with my dad. He and his generation have needed to develop an armor to face life, which we never had to have. We grew up pretty sheltered and laid-back, playing with Lite-Bright, tying macramé, listening to Carole King, James Taylor, Elton John. The Vietnam War was a blur. We didn’t watch the equivalent of The Daily Show or John Oliver with our parents, like Julian does. We watched The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

     As we walk to the car, need I say out loud, “One day, I’ll be in grandpa’s position, and you’ll be in my position”? No, I needn’t, but I do. Why do I? I don’t want to burden Julian with that thought. It’s enough to know that Julian watched me kneeling down next to, and transferring my pure love to the man who raised me. It’s easy for me, as I wrote on the Father’s Day card to him today, “You taught me how to love.” Julian read that when I gave the card to him to sign.

     Julian says, “His eyes really lit up when you told him I liked real estate.”

     "Really?" I ask. I didn't notice.

“How tall was grandpa?” Julian asks. And I realize, he doesn’t really know because it’s hard to tell when you’re a little kid looking up, and my dad’s been bent-over and in a wheelchair for the past 6 years.  He doesn’t know something that I know so well. “Somewhere between you and Papa,” I answer.

*Karl Malden.

 (He had bright blue eyes.)