Sifting through a life

My garage is almost empty of the stuff from The Condo. One of the boxes contained belongings from my maternal grandfather. He owned a five and ten cent store in Indiana, and most of my memories of him are in that store. I didn't have a strong influence from grandparents growing up. One grandmother died when I was one, the other when I was seven. My two grandfathers were far apart from one another; one a country mouse, the other a city mouse, albeit a very small city. My paternal grandfather lived and worked a farm. The other lived on the outskirts of the town in a two-story house that held to a young girl in love with fantasy many treasures and mysteries. Neither grandfather was hands-on, or touchy, feeling. Beyond the requisite welcoming hug demanded of by my mother or father, I didn't touch them. They were an obligation of my childhood.

But as I got older my maternal grandfather held the edge. He sold a certain mystery series in his store that I couldn't find anywhere else, not even the library, and I was allowed to pick out a few books at each visit. Which was twice a year in the summer and Thanksgiving. We would enter the store, troop to his office in the very back of the store up the stairs to his small office where he had an array of pictures of us, his grandchildren. Thinking of my mother mailing him our current school pictures is as foreign to me as it was to see our pictures to the side of his desk. He would ask us about school, reach into his pocket and pull out a bill to give us for missed birthdays, and then we would be free. Free to get an ice cream soda from the soda fountain and a bag of candy from the candy counter. Any other conversation was had with my mother and my brother and I could have cared less.

Of course, now as an adult, I have questions about my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even my parents, wishing I had paid more attention to their stories. I used to read biographies of famous people as a child, yet I didn't bother listening to or learning the stories of the people right in front of my eyes. And now as I go through their belongings after deaths, I have so many questions and no answers, and then there is the matter of where to put what was once important to them. 

My grandfather's belongings were packed into a box, and although my brother and I both went through the box several times, the stuff inside meant little to us because we didn't really know his story beyond the small niblets we had garnered from our mother through the years. So, we left the box for our aunt to sift through, to take what she wanted, and to maybe give insight into a man who had saved the basketball netting from several championship games.

This wasn't the first time we had gone through the box. Years ago, during another Christmas, my mother had brought out the boxes for both of her parents and the two sisters had gone through them reminising. Months after my own mother died I brought the same boxes to a reunion we had with relatives and I learned my grandfather had traveled to Japan. Unlike those times, the people around us were more involved as several items caught attention and were examined and questioned.

We told my nephews about our grandfather's store and the candy counter where people bought by the scoop. We looked through a scrapbook of my grandfather's teenage sports years and his adult business accomplishments, wondering who had put it together. His mother? Himself? We read papers from 1929-1936 kept because of basketball wins and reasons we couldn't figure out. There were souvenirs from Japan, postcards from a beach excursion, and a small box of small items including lighters, tie clips, and pins.

My aunt kept a few things, but she kept insisting I hold on to things like the scrapbook. For what, I asked? What was I suppose to do with that? Someday my children would have to decide what to do with this stuff, stuff from a man they didn't even know. My aunt cried. It was a life and it was sad, and I got it. It's one of the reasons why I continue this blog. It's a history. It's why I want to explore my heritage this year, delve into the lives of people I knew, but didn't really see. 

And so, later that evening when I returned home I packed it back up into the box and stored it with the boxes I have of my mother's, my father's, and my own stuff. Maybe later I'll be able to add some stories to go along with the items so that when my children go through the boxes they will at least have a background. And carry on the Christmas tradition...