everyone's got a story

I spent the day yesterday with my family and there were two moments that I feel the need to remember. So, I am going to take a minute and write about it.

My grandfather (Luis, my mother's father) died in November of 2005. My mother was the first daughter born and her father was very important to her. My mom is a tough lady. She's strong-willed, has strong opinions, and doesn't often let her emotions show unless those emotions are frustration or anger. Only when something is super intense have I seen my mother cry. In fact, I can only vividly remember her crying three times in my life. She cried when her grandmother died, she cried when I graduated from college and was getting on my one-way flight to Oregon, and, lastly, when her dad, my grandfather died. I always saw her as way stronger emotionally than me, who cries if someone looks at me cross-eyed. I well up when someone mentions something that triggers half a sad emotion. I am a raw, emotional, weepy woman who wells up at the drop of a hat. My mother is much more contained than I in the crying department.

But last night was different. My grandmother and aunt (my mom's mom and little sister) were over for Thanksgiving and we were sitting around eating dinner and talking and something about ghosts came up. My family is really into all things other-worldly, which is where I get it from. She started to talk about how Papa, right after he passed, would send little messages to her in life and in dreams. Then my brother mentioned how right around her birthday a few years ago, my grandfather came to him in a dream. He saw my mom as a little girl wearing a tiara and the whole family was around. My grandfather walked over to my brother and said to him, "don't forget it's your mom's birthday. please tell her she'll always be my little princess." And, in the way my grandfather always did, he said, "I have to go," and very quickly walked away. My mother eyes welled up as she was telling this story, her face getting red and her voice cracking. In that moment, I felt like I understood what was going on in her heart and in her mind.

I very often feel like I don't get my mom. We are as different as night and day, so for me to say that I understood how she felt is big. I finally got that her dad was the leading man in her life just the way my dad was for many years. She felt special to him and for him to make his way to my brother on her birthday was huge for her.

That same night, my sister had a similar dream, but my mother wasn't a child in this one. It was similar in the way that everyone was around my grandfather came over to her and left very quickly. But I'm getting off-track here. The focus is on how, in that moment, I related with my mom. I saw her as, not just my mother who supports and loves and helps and pesters and judges and takes care of me but also as a daughter who misses her dad. And for the first time, really, I related.

My other grandfather, (Arthur, my father's father) died in July of 2006. I was in the car with my dad, telling him about the Holocaust class I just took, forgetting all about the fact that my grandfather had fought in the Army during World War II. My father began telling me things I had no idea happened. He told me that his dad was a Sergeant and that his Army buddies would come over when my dad was a kid and call him Serg... they told my dad that his father was a real hero and they probably wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for him, and my grandfather (who I don't remember that well because I didn't really know him) didn't like to talk about the war and would tell them to stop talking about it.

He told me that during the war, my grandfather was trapped in a fox hole in the dead of winter for days and got frostbite and that they fought in the Battle of the Bulge. They also found a concentration camp and my grandfather, Sergeant Arthur Martinez, was one of the people who opened the gate and helped free the Jews being held prisoners. Apparently, there was this shoe store close by that was selling shoes that the Jews were forced to make, so my grandfather brought them over to this store and told them to go in and grab whatever shoes they wanted, being that they had none. My father is telling me these stories as we make the short drive to my childhood home and I'm thinking, I wish I'd heard these stories from him and I could ask him a million questions!

In that moment, I recognized the pride that my dad felt in his dad. I know how much my dad loved his parents and misses them. I wish I had known them better and feel lucky that I get to know my parents they way I do.

It's crazy. Everyone's got a story. No matter how mundane things may seem, there's always something underneath it and no matter how tough and unemotional somebody acts, they're still touched deeply by something. You just have to be around and open to seeing it.