Grand Memories

Scott Hardie | November 14, 2014
What's one of your fondest memories involving a grandparent?

Steve West | November 15, 2014
This seems a little reckless now but when I was about seven, I was playing in my backyard and stepped on an old board with a protruding nail. It was long enough to penetrate my shoe and pierce the sole of my foot. I went crying into our house and my mother was all set to take me to the doctor for a preventive tetanus shot. My grandfather, my mother's father, squashed that notion and lifted me to the kitchen sink where he gently washed my foot with soap and water. He said comforting things to me especially talk of no need for any damn needles. He wrapped my foot with gauze and some type of anti-bacterial cream and kidded that I was good as new and would be a pain in his ass again soon enough. I look back on the potential repercussions of taking rusty nail punctures perhaps less seriously than they should have been but remember how much I loved him for his gentleness and viewed him with such admiration for his resolve.

Steve West | November 15, 2014
My maternal grandmother, Lucy, was a very educated woman but she didn't drive. After I got my driver's license, I asked her what was the one place I could take her that she never got the opportunity to go. She replied, "France." I told her that it would be a little difficult to drive across the Atlantic but I would see what I could do. After scouring the local paper looking for events and emptying my meager bank account, I planned a nice excursion for her. I told her to dress in her nicest clothes and she enthusiastically searched her closet to find a dress that was just a little out of style but she looked beautiful. The Kennedy Center was doing a nice Edith Piaf retrospective show and we had dinner at La Colline, a very high priced French restaurant in downtown DC. I tipped the waiter to speak French only which we both understood to give her a sense of atmosphere. She savored the champagne and we shared a very rich dessert. We spoke broken French for the entire meal. After the show, she was a little tired and dozed on the way home but when we arrived, she said she could not remember having a better evening ever. She died a few years later and I reflected that seeing the young woman that she was that evening was probably the best evening I had spent, too.

Erik Bates | December 16, 2014
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Erik Bates | December 16, 2014
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