In my veins

November 19, 2008
Today, I am in Maryland, going to the Eastern Shore to visit Nana and Pops. I am 24 years old, 2 years out of college, living in New York City, working as a coffee shop barista and an after-school tutor. I have two Bachelor’s degrees, some neat stories from some great international trips, and I speak two languages.
My grandparents are 91 and 93 years old. They are from Mississippi, met when they were my age, and started a family soon thereafter. Pops was good student and a diligent worker, and a soft-spoken, caring, and thoughtful man. He began as a surveyor, and worked his way up in Bell Laboratories, innovating the technology of conductors, helping to bring electricity to America, and gaining at least one patent to his name, until as an executive he was able to create his own spin-off company, Lindburg. They raised four children, affording a suburban lifestyle and private schools. Their children fought wars, traveled and lived internationally, created businesses of their own, and raised their own families. Nana and Pops owned a home on the Gulf Coast, a condo in Steamboat, and an island cottage in the Bahamas. Now, at the sunset of life, their condo sold, the Bahamas getaway given to the next generations, the Mississippi home destroyed by Katrina, they live in a retirement community in Maryland, playing bridge, visiting with other retirees, reading books and watching Fox News.
Who they were and are is a product of place and time. They were the children of a proud and cultured Southern class, Pops in line to a drugstore legacy, and Nana the second daughter of a town mayor. They came to maturity in the Great Depression, and have remained frugal and opportunistic ever since. As testament to the liberal progression of our nation, they were more racially open-minded than their parents, Nana attended the first women’s university in Mississippi, and they considered moving out of the state, northward.
My life has been quite different from theirs. I was born to free-market Clinton hippies, who had left their places of origin and upbringing, trotted the globe, and landed in the mountains of Colorado to ski, hike, raft, chop wood. We dragged a pine tree into the living room each Christmas, but did not whisper prayers to the baby Jesus. We grilled elk that we had hunted instead of carving a roast beef. We decorated eggs and ate Grammy Rolls in the April sunshine, but never had to hold the fork with our right hand, shine our shoes, or eat the host. I learned to whip Brookie-laden streams with a 4-foot leader, scout rapids, and field dress an elk.
And all this time, my grandparents remain role models to me. They have built such a beautiful life around them, a sort of kingdom, which they reign over as matriarch and patriarch. My grandmother’s piercing blue eyes inspire fear, bitterness, and respect. My grandfather’s patience and deliberation was unparalleled and I remember watching him maintain his tidy workshop or pot plants in his immaculate garden. At dinner, Nana would tell stories or dole out advice, and Pops would silently pull flakes of crab meat out of the tiniest legs. At the right moment, Nana would pause from her story, and Pops would serve his poke onto her plate. She would thank him silently, invisibly, lovingly.