I have lived three and a half miles away from my grandparents home since before I can remember. White paint stained yellow from years of heavy snow and rain, and shingles sagging under the weight of past burdens, it is a house held together by loose thread. The walls, covered in maps, photographs, newspaper clippings, and generations of dirty handprints, are about to burst at their seams as they sag closer and closer to my father’s prized day lilies.
We were raised in that house—sisters, cousins, childhood best-friends. For all of us, at different times, it was home. The cracks in its walls were, at one point, as familiar to us as the crinkles on our grandparents faces.
Years have passed since those days. The hours spent holding my grandmother’s hand on the bus and counting quarters for my grandfather’s treasured Chinese newspapers are long gone. The last printed edition of the Chinese newspaper, fresh from Chicago, passed through my grandfather’s hands months ago. Now my only gifts to him are fumbled greetings and tight smiles; the only counting I do the minutes until someone once again asks me how much Chinese I speak.
It was about a half a month ago, sitting and watching my grandfather at yet another Chao family function, that I suddenly realized that I knew absolutely nothing about him. He is 93-years-old, has lived three and a half miles away from me my entire life, and up until about a week ago, I hadn’t had an actual conversation with him in possibly more than five years. Not only did I know quite nearly nothing about this man, but could quite easily count on my hands the number of times we had talked about something more than my height, which by the way, I’m deeply sorry to tell you grandpa, hasn’t changed since freshman year. I just counted: the number is zero.
I had spent hours in his house; spent countless evenings listening to his dinner prayers; for years eaten his treasured pineapple cakes; and throughout my whole life, had never spoken more than a handful of sentences to him at a time.
I was ashamed and I was scared. The thought of, after years of borderline radio silence, actually speaking to my grandfather in any meaningful capacity terrified me. Years of what I used to think of as peaceful existence had in fact turned the both of us into, essentially, strangers. Or had we always been that way?
I already had, and still do have, too many strangers in my life: I give and receive tight lipped smiles like dirty money and every time wish that each recipient were less of a mystery. And yet I do nothing to change these interactions. But sitting there, my hand wrapped tightly in that of my grandmothers, my eyes glued on my nearing 94-year-old grandpa, I realized how desperately I did not want my grandfather to be a stranger.
Almost every part of it was awkward. From the initial “Can you translate for me Dad?” to when I stepped out the door that second day, it was awkward. I felt weird and out of place in the same chair that I had careened off of as a child so many time before; in the same room that I had played leap-frog until my grandmother yelled so loud that even the carpet shook; the same house that had seen me cry, scream, laugh, and maybe even yodel from time to time. In that same room I felt like an alien: an outsider in the very place I used to call home.
But awkward is not necessarily bad. Entering into that room I could not have told you where my grandfather was born. But three hours and two cups of tea later, I can now tell you not only where he was born, but why his nose is so flat a book can be balanced there, or why he has missed his mother everyday since he left China.
I could tell you as many stories as he told me. I could tell you all about California as an immigrant, about homemade ties in storefront windows, and books so long they don’t even teach them anymore. But really, that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that I was there to hear him: to see his face crinkle when he laughed and to answer his questions, although far less frequent, in return to mine. I didn’t leave the house a stranger that evening, and that was what was truly important.