Pre-Pre-school – Chatham, New Jersey

Bill enters the delivery room wearing a custom-tailored grey suit; Jane, a floral dress and fire-engine red lipstick. My grandparents greet their son and his young wife.

Bill steps forward, gazes down at my sister, his first grandchild, and announces to no one in particular, “Yep. That’s a baby alright.” He steps back and begins talking to my father.  

Jane and Bill do not visit when I’m born.  

Elementary School Years – Reading, Pennsylvania

The kids’ table is in the kitchen area, resting on the faux brick linoleum floor of my childhood home. My parents, grandparents, aunt, and uncle are in the formal dining room. The dining room is accented by ebony hardwood floors, an antique sideboard, and a dark cherry table polished to a high shine and set with our finest China. I wear itchy wool pants and a blue checkered shirt. Whenever my sister, cousins, and I become loud, my mom sticks her head into the kitchen and says something like, “Your grandparents are here. Quiet down!” 

I have no memory of interacting with Jane and Bill before or after dinner. 

Middle School Years – Reading, Pennsylvania

My cousins, my sister, and I have graduated from the kids’ table to the grownup table. Before our meal with Jane and Bill, I am schooled and re-schooled in etiquette. I memorize which forks to use and when, which glasses and plates are mine, and where the napkin goes while I’m eating.  

While we now sit with the grown-ups, we kids speak little during the meals. My grandparents, parents, and aunt and uncle speak over and around us.

High School Years – Fort Myers, Florida

My father and I travel alone to visit Jane and Bill: my parents are divorced, and my sister is busy at college. Jane, still in her red lipstick and floral dress, greets us with a hug and a crinkly smile. The lakefront home smells of Pledge wood polish, oriental carpets touched by the Florida humidity, and flowery hand soaps shaped like seashells in pinks and purples.  

Jane walks us around each morning showing off her garden, the geckos, and her prized landscaping, while Bill remains at the kitchen table. He sits shirtless in his paper-thin, sky-blue bathrobe, reading three newspapers—the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the local Fort Myers News—from Section A to the classifieds. He emerges from his routine to eat lunch with Jane, my father, and me at the glass dining room table. Despite my growing stature and maturity, I still get the kids’ table treatment: Bill asks me a few questions and focuses his attention on my father.  

On the last night of our visit, my father flips through an old photo album with me. We reach a black-and-white picture of Jane, Bill, my uncle, and my father together on horses on their old farm. A dozen foxhounds surround the horses’ feet. My father, the youngest, looks like he is a pre-teen.  

He says to me, “We went on a lot of fox hunts. When I was a kid, I didn’t know what I was doing. I just held on to whatever horse my parents gave me and trusted it to get me through. But when I was 12, one of the horses threw me off.” He pauses. “I broke my collarbone.”  

Transfixed by the photo, my father says, “Dad told me to stop complaining and to get back on the horse.”

 “What did you do?” I asked. 

“I got back on, moved to the back of the pack so no one could hear me cry, and finished the hunt.” 

The Summer Before College – Naples, Florida

Another visit. Another photo album. Jane talks me through her and Bill’s wedding day: Bill, straight-backed in his Marine Officer’s uniform, Jane radiant and laughing in her wedding dress. “We were dating when Willy volunteered to be an infantry officer.” She offers a smile that does not reach her eyes. “He probably could have avoided the war if he wanted. But he joined. When he finished his first tour in the Pacific, he came back and we married. Willy volunteered a few days later for another tour. We wrote letters until he came home.” 

My father finished the story when we were alone later that night. “Dad led a mortar platoon on Guadalcanal. The battle was a meat-grinder. One of the worst of the war. After another year of fighting, Dad got malaria and dropped to 90 pounds. That finally brought him home for good.”  

I only see Bill at lunch and dinner. Our conversations rarely exceed small talk about school, baseball, and the alligators in the lake.

College Years – Naples, Florida

Bill greets us at the door. A first. He wears the same paper-thin, baby-blue bathrobe with no shirt. Jane is ill. She lies bedridden. Her chronic abdominal conditions are painful; her dementia accelerating.  

On the second day of our visit, Bill shuffles to the dining room table at lunch. Just the three generations of Batchelor men. Bill engages me. Asks me questions. We discuss my studies, potential career paths, and world events. That night, my father goes to bed early and I sit silently with Bill as he watches boxing on ESPN, the first time we have done anything alone. 

On the day of our departure, Jane remains in bed. Bill gets up from the table and walks us out. In the front yard, he hugs me for the first time that I can remember. I stoop to wrap my arms around his diminished frame. Through the draping bathrobe, my hands graze his ribs. I reflexively lift my arms and step away in embarrassment. “See you next year, my boy,” Bill says to me. 
 

Four Months After College – Washington, DC

The smoke from the Pentagon turns from black to light gray as it reaches the sky. I am looking out my window at the Federal Reserve. I walk home with the rest of the city, underneath a canopy of clear blue skies. 

As the country takes a wartime footing, Bill reverts to his letter-writing from the Second World War. I receive a postcard from National Geographic with shaky handwriting on it. Six words are written in smudged black ink next to the print notification of a gifted annual subscription. Those six words are the only ones I can ever remember my grandfather writing to me: “Keep your head down. Love, Bill.” 

One Month Before Graduate School – Naples, Florida

My father and I visit Bill alone in his home. The phone rings. It’s Jane. She asks Bill to pick her up from the hotel. He yells into the phone, “Damn it, Janey, you’re in a nursing home.” He cries after hanging up.  

My father and I visit Jane in the Alzheimer’s ward. She continues to wear a floral dress. Her red lipstick sinks into the wrinkles around her mouth. She tells us stories about her childhood, brothers, and courtship with Bill, but none with her kids or grandkids.  

I’m unsure if she knows who I am. 

First Year of Graduate School – Naples, Florida

My father naps in the other room. Bill and I watch news coverage of U.S. military action in Iraq. The Florida sun is shining through the windows. I am lying in front of the TV on a wool and silk oriental carpet. Dust floats through the sun’s rays.

I ask, “What was war like for you?”  

Bill’s gaze shifts from the TV to me. His voice is soft with age.

“War is horrible. You can have a grenade land next to you one day and walk away without a scratch on you. The next, a friend is killed by shrapnel from a mortar 200 meters away.” He looks down at the carpet. “It’s horrible.”  

He goes on, his tone picking up pace. “You know, I didn’t trust the new semi-automatic pistols the Marines issued for the Pacific. They jammed. I asked for one of the .45 revolvers we trained with. They were reliable. Workhorses. They were standard issue for officers during the First World War.” A smirk crosses his face. “I had to threaten an enlisted man with that old thing. We were under fire from the ridgeline. Some private came running and said he had orders from command. Said we were to execute an ‘acute retreat.’” Bill’s head raises, matching his tone. “I told him there is no such order as an ‘acute retreat’ and we would stay and hold our position. The kid ran to some of my men and tried to force a retreat. I grabbed him, took out my .45, and said if he tried to take any of my men, I’d shoot him right then and there for desertion. So, we stayed. And we held our position.” The softness in his voice is replaced by amusement and maybe a hint of pride.  

I return to my room and write down this story and others. I read them to my father the next day. He says it’s more than Bill has ever told him about his tours.  

The morning of our departure, Bill hands me a stack of yellow Post-It notes.

“Put these on anything of mine you want after I’m dead.” I don’t place any Post-It notes.  

Second Year of Graduate School – Naples, Florida

My girlfriend, Steph, joins my father and me during our visit. Bill’s eyes gleam as he professes to Steph, “My dear, your ravishing beauty hath taken my breath away.” He offers a conspiratorial smile and a wink that only I can see. 

At the nursing home, my grandmother’s lipstick leaves a red smudge when she gives Steph a kiss on the cheek. 

Two Months After Graduate School – Avignon, France

My father calls me with the surprising, inevitable news when Steph and I are in Avignon. He tells me Bill did not want a funeral. His ashes will be sprinkled at his home in Florida. That night, Steph lets me walk the streets on my own. My tears mix with the drizzle on the cobble-stoned streets.

Five Years After Graduate School – Naples, Florida

My father and my annual visits to Jane are carbon copies of one another: warm hugs, stories from her days as a child on the farm, walking the grounds of her nursing home, and more hugs. Until next year’s visit.  

Jane passes three months before my son–her first great-grandchild–is born. 

 

Elementary School Years – Potomac, Maryland

During one of his annual visits from his home in Belize, my father sits across the kitchen table talking to Steph, me, and our two young children. He regales us with stories of scorpions, tarantulas, bats, snakes, and army ants that frequent his home, leaving off the malaria endemic in his district. I am the only family member to visit him regularly. 

I join the storytelling to add to the mystique. “There are gators in the bay. When we go swimming, we take our ‘gator stick’ for protection.” 

“What’s that?” my son asks. 

“It’s a long branch with an end grandpa sharpened like a spear,” I say. 

My son looks confused. 

“If a gator comes, we give it the sharp end of the stick,” my father says. He gives Noah a familiar, conspiratorial wink and smile. 

Later that morning, we say our goodbyes, hug, and take pictures in the front yard. That’s all the kids will have until next year’s visit. 

As my father drives away, my heart is in two places: saddened by the few chances my children have to connect with their grandfather, but grateful we never let them sit at the kids’ table in the first place.

Andrew Batchelor is an economist who writes proposals and impact reports in the field of international development. In his spare time, he serves as a riot officer between his children, constructs towers of books waiting to be read, and falls often in beer-league ice hockey. His first published work will be issued by Illanot Review and Half and One. Andrew lives in Potomac, Maryland, with his wife, two children, and dog overlord.