One More Wave Goodbye

I was recently on the phone with my sister, and as sisters tend to do, our conversation wandered from one random subject to another. Somehow, we ended up talking about our grandparents on my dad's side of the family. She mentioned how excited she used to get whenever we were going to visit them at their house. It was such a simple comment, but it caught me completely off guard. I had never realized that she remembered those visits the same way I did..

My sister and I are five years apart. That means absolutely nothing at our age, but when you're five, and your sister is ten, that's practically a generation apart. We grew up in the same family, but we didn't always experience things in quite the same way. So when she told me she could still remember that feeling of excitement, it surprised me because I remembered it, too. Not just enjoying the visits, but that wonderful, almost impossible-to-contain excitement of knowing we were going there. All these years later, I had no idea she'd felt exactly the same way.

Let me backtrack a little and tell you about my grandparents. By the time I came along, my grandpa had already been retired for quite a while. I believe he retired sometime in his early 50s, which, now that I'm 60, seems pretty amazing.

Growing up, I knew what my grandpa had done for a living, and I knew that he and my grandma owned quite a bit of farmland. What I didn't know until recently was just how hard he had worked to build the life they had. Throughout much of my dad's childhood, Grandpa worked seven days a week, although he always made a point of coming home for lunch with his family.

He dropped out of school in eighth grade, but make no mistake, he was a smart man. He started out delivering milk and worked his way up the proverbial ladder. What I've only recently discovered is that he was also quite the entrepreneur. Much of the money that allowed him to retire so young came from his own ideas and his ability to turn them into successful opportunities. Clearly, he had a pretty good head for business.

But none of that meant anything to me as a child. To me, he was simply Grandpa. I can still picture him walking around with that familiar smile on his face, one hand tucked into his pocket, jingling the loose change he always seemed to have in there. Even now, all these years later, I can almost hear it.

He had a sweet tooth, always took an interest in whatever I was doing, and had a way of making me feel like he was genuinely happy just to have me around. He called my grandma "Toots," a name that somehow said everything about how he felt about her. He absolutely adored her, and even as a child, I could see that. I never once remember hearing him raise his voice, lose his temper, or even look particularly annoyed.

Looking back, I imagine he must have had a pretty driven and determined side to accomplish everything he did. But I never saw that side of him. The grandpa I knew could have stepped right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He was gentle, kind, and always seemed perfectly content with his little corner of the world. I didn't know the man who had spent years working seven days a week to build a life for his family. I knew the man who got to enjoy it, and who always seemed to have plenty of time for me.

My grandma was strong and kind, and she loved all of us unconditionally. I never had to wonder how she felt about me. It didn't matter what I did or what kind of trouble I might get into, I never doubted for a second that her love would be there. I knew that she had always wanted a large family, but she and my grandpa were only able to have my dad. In that way, she and I had something in common.

My grandma didn't let having only one child stop her from loving a whole lot more. She simply expanded her circle. She took people under her wing, made them feel like family, and seemed to have an endless supply of love to give. I think she found a way to have that big family she'd always wanted, just not quite the way she'd originally imagined.

But there was another side to my grandma that I've come to appreciate more as I've gotten older. She was a smart, strong, capable woman with a mind of her own. She graduated from college and worked for several years before marrying my grandpa, something I imagine wasn't all that common for women in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

She also played a much bigger role in their financial success than I ever realized. My grandpa loved his cars, but my grandma had other ideas about where their money should go. Every year, she made sure they saved enough to buy more farmland and little by little, those acres added up.

The more I learn about my grandparents, the more I realize what a team they must have been. Grandpa had the ideas and the drive to turn them into something, while Grandma had the foresight to make sure what they earned became something lasting.

Of course, none of that occurred to me when I was little. I just knew Grandma loved me, Grandpa always smiled when he saw me, and their house was one of my favorite places to be.

That house on Elm Street was built when my dad was just three years old. It was the one constant throughout his life, and it became one of the constants in mine, too. I've mentioned before that we moved a lot when I was growing up. Different houses, different neighborhoods, different places to get used to. But no matter where we lived or how much things changed, that house on Elm Street was always there.

Upstairs, Grandma kept a closet filled with my dad's old toys, and that was usually the first place we headed when we arrived. To us, it was a treasure chest. We could spend hours digging through things that had belonged to him decades before we were born, and we each had our favorite toy to play with.

Grandpa's office had once been a screened-in porch that they'd converted years earlier. It had a Dutch door, one of those doors where the top and bottom opened separately, which I always thought was so cool. We regularly took over the room to play "office," writing silly notes, rummaging through his desk drawers, and pretending we had very important business to attend to. I don't ever remember him getting annoyed that we'd taken over his workspace. He just let us play, as if whatever important business we were conducting was every bit as important as his own.

There are so many little details about that house I can still remember. I can hear that familiar creak in the stairs, picture the orange cookie jar that always seemed to have something good inside, and almost smell Grandma's roses drifting in from the garden. Funny how certain things stay with you for a lifetime. I couldn't tell you what I had for dinner three nights ago, but I can still hear those stairs as clearly as if I climbed them yesterday.

No matter how long it had been since our last visit, everything always seemed to be just as we'd left it. The toys were still in the closet, the cookies were still in the jar, and Grandma and Grandpa were always happy to see us. In a childhood that involved a lot of moving and adjusting to new places, there was something wonderful about knowing that one place never seemed to change.

That house was my happy place, and what surprised me during that phone call with my sister was realizing it had been hers, too. All these years, I'd thought of those memories as my own. It never really occurred to me that she had been carrying around that same feeling of happiness and belonging. We were five years apart, but apparently, when it came to Grandma and Grandpa's house, we weren't so different after all.

The house is still there, although someone else has called it home for years. My grandparents have been gone for a long time, and I haven't been inside in decades. But I can still walk through those rooms in my mind. There's one memory, though, that has stayed with me more vividly than almost any other.

Every time we left, Grandma would stand in the driveway waving goodbye as we backed out. But she wasn't finished yet. She'd hurry back inside so she could wave to us one more time from the front door as we passed by. I can still see her standing there, waving until we were out of sight.

It's such a simple little thing, but of all the memories I have of that house, that one has stayed with me the most. I don't know if Grandma ever realized how much those extra few seconds meant to me. She probably wasn't thinking about creating a lifelong memory. She was just saying goodbye the way she knew how.

I've made a point of doing that same thing with my daughter. When she drives away, I stand there and wave, and I keep watching until I can't see her anymore. Sometimes I wonder if she thinks it's a little silly, but I hope someday she'll understand why I do it. I remember exactly what it felt like to look back and see Grandma still standing there, still waving, still wanting one more glimpse of us before we disappeared down the road. I want my daughter to know that feeling, too. To know that no matter how old she gets or where life takes her, I'll always want to watch her go until I can't see her anymore.

It's funny that a conversation with my sister about a house we haven't visited in decades could bring back so much. I started writing this because I wanted to remember my grandparents and the wonderful place they created for us. But somewhere along the way, I realized that some of those memories have quietly become part of the way I live my own life.

My grandparents worked hard to build a life and leave something behind for their family. But it's not the things they owned that I find myself thinking about. It's the way they made us feel loved, and how, without even realizing it, they taught us to pass that love along.

Plot twist... All these years later, I'm still waving back