The Roots

As I sat down to write this third letter, something bothered me.

It sounded familiar. Maybe a little too familiar.

Chapter 1 took me back to how my life began. Chapter 2 took me to the four people I call my parents. And now here I am again, digging even further backward instead of moving forward.

At first, I thought maybe I was repeating myself. Then it hit me.

Of course these stories overlap.

I’m trying to explain where I came from.

You can’t tell the story of my parents without eventually finding their parents. And you can’t really understand the person I’ve become without understanding at least a little about the people who shaped them first.

So maybe these first three chapters aren’t three separate stories after all.

Maybe they’re the foundation.

Or better yet…the roots.

And that’s when this chapter became harder.

Because I knew my grandparents.

At least, I thought I did.

I knew them as Grandma and Grandpa.

But when I sat down to thank them, I realized how little I knew about the people they were before those names belonged to them.

So I started asking questions.

Grandma and Grandpa

I was fortunate enough to know my grandparents on my mother’s side, Ella Louise Spafford and Leonard Eisen.

My memories of them aren’t complete. They’re childhood memories—little flashes that have somehow survived while so many other details disappeared.

What I didn’t know as a kid was everything that happened before me.

Grandma Ella came from near Belleville, Ontario, Canada. She was the youngest of eight children and grew up on a farm where the family produced much of what they needed themselves.

Her father operated the local water system. Years later, Grandma rode along with my mother while she checked wells for her own job and remembered doing the same thing beside her father when she was young.

That little story caught my attention.

Her father probably had no idea that ordinary moment would survive this long.

A father and daughter checking wells.

Years later, that daughter remembering it while riding with her own daughter.

And now her grandson writing about it.

Grandpa Leonard came from a completely different world.

He was an only child raised in the Bronx in an Orthodox Jewish household.

His father, Abraham Eisen, came to America from Poland through Ellis Island in 1922. Family stories say he fled mandatory military service and eventually made his way to the United States, where he earned a living candling eggs.

My great-grandmother Fay came from Spanish-Jewish roots, and together they raised Leonard in a kosher home filled with Jewish traditions.

Somewhere along the way, an English-Canadian farm girl met a Jewish kid from the Bronx.

And eventually they became my grandparents.

Brooklands

They built their early life together in Suffern, New York.

My mother’s first memories come from a little two-bedroom cottage at Brooklands on the old Dan Beard Estate.

When she describes it, it sounds like another world.

There were woods and orchards, a brook where the kids caught crawdads, frozen lakes for skating, snow forts in the winter, and neighborhood children who disappeared outside for hours at a time.

There were Sunday walks into town for breakfast at the diner.

There was a menorah in the kitchen and a Christmas tree in the living room.

There wasn’t much by today’s standards.

But from the way my mother remembers it, there was plenty.

Eventually Grandpa wanted more.

The Unreachable Star

Grandpa built a successful advertising business in New York City.

The little cottage eventually gave way to a beautiful house at 15 Charnwood Drive.

There were new cars.

A boat.

Family vacations.

Cape Cod.

Deep-sea fishing off Montauk Point.

Trips into New York City.

From the outside, they had achieved what so many families were chasing.

The American Dream.

One story my mother shared about Grandpa has stayed with me.

He loved The Man of La Mancha and would walk through the house singing about reaching the unreachable star.

Years later, he told her that he had accomplished just about everything he thought he wanted.

And he still wasn’t happy.

At this point in my own life, with more than two decades of a Marine Corps career behind me and retirement getting closer, I hear that differently than I probably would have twenty years ago.

Grandpa eventually learned that getting everything you thought you wanted doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve found everything you needed.

Their marriage also didn’t last.

Grandma and Grandpa eventually divorced.

But here’s the strange part. I didn’t know. Not for years.

Whatever had happened between them as husband and wife seemed to stay between them. When it came to us grandchildren, Grandma and Grandpa would still come visit together.

So in my little world, they were simply Grandma and Grandpa.

I didn’t learn until I was a teenager that they had actually been divorced.

Looking back now, I appreciate that more than I could have then.

I don’t know everything they had to put aside to do that.

I don’t know what conversations happened before or after those visits.

I only know what the grandson saw.

They showed up.

Together.

And sometimes what adults choose not to place on the shoulders of children matters just as much as what they give them.

The People I Remember

The more I sit with this, the more little pieces start coming back.

Grandma was sweet and quiet.

She wasn’t someone who needed to fill a room. There was a gentleness about her that I remember even now.

Grandpa was pretty much the opposite.

When Grandpa was around, you knew Grandpa was around.

He had a presence about him and a dry sense of humor that I probably didn’t fully appreciate as a kid.

But there’s something else I remember about both of them.

They never forgot us.

They lived all the way in New York, so we didn’t have the kind of relationship grandchildren have when Grandma and Grandpa live down the street.

But birthdays came with cards.

Presents came in the mail.

And somehow, they were always on time.

As a kid, I’m sure I cared a lot more about what was inside the package.

Today, I understand what the package actually meant.

Somewhere far away, Grandma and Grandpa knew my birthday was coming.

They thought about us.

They picked something out.

They mailed it early enough to make sure it arrived when it was supposed to.

Year after year. That’s love too.

It isn’t some enormous sacrifice or dramatic family story.

Maybe that’s exactly why I appreciate it now.

They found simple ways to make distance feel a little smaller.

And they made sure their grandchildren knew that even when Grandma and Grandpa weren’t standing in the room…

we were still on their minds.

The Roots I Never Knew

My father’s side of this story is different.

His parents died when he was young.

Because of that, I never had the opportunity to meet them.

There are no childhood visits for me to remember.

No conversations.

No familiar smells from Grandma’s kitchen.

No stories about sitting beside Grandpa.

For most of my life, that part of my family simply existed somewhere behind my father.

Now I’m asking questions.

I want to know who they were.

What made them laugh.

What they struggled with.

What they taught their son during the short time they had with him.

And perhaps most importantly, how losing them so young shaped the boy they left behind.

Because their influence didn’t necessarily end when their lives did.

That little boy grew up.

He became my father.

And part of him became part of me.

We never shared a conversation.

I never heard your voices.

I don’t know what advice you would have given me, or whether I inherited your smile, your laugh, or your stubbornness.

But I know this.

You gave the world a little boy who would one day become my father.

For that alone, you deserve my gratitude.

A Letter of Appreciation

Grandma and Grandpa,

I wish I remembered more.

I wish I could sit here and fill pages with conversations we had and questions I was smart enough to ask.

But I can’t. What I do remember are pieces.

Grandma, I remember your sweetness and the quiet way you carried yourself.

Grandpa, I remember your presence and that dry humor of yours. You weren’t exactly built for sneaking quietly into a room.

I remember the visits.

I remember the cards.

And I definitely remember the presents.

As a kid, I’m sure the present was the important part.

It took growing up to realize the important part was that you remembered to send it.

You lived far away, but you never allowed the distance to become an excuse for disappearing from our lives.

And perhaps one of the things I appreciate most today is something I didn’t even understand back then.

Your marriage had ended.

But somehow, when it came to your grandchildren, you still showed up together.

I was a teenager before I even understood you were divorced.

Whatever difficulties existed between the two of you belonged to the adults.

You didn’t ask your grandchildren to carry them.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for remembering birthdays.

Thank you for mailing the cards.

Thank you for the presents that always seemed to arrive right when they were supposed to.

Thank you for making the trip.

Thank you for showing up.

And thank you for raising my mother.

The older I get, the more I realize that some of the greatest things people give us don’t seem particularly important when we’re receiving them.

Sometimes appreciation comes years later.

This is one of those times.I may not remember everything.

But I remember enough to know that I was loved.

And that’s a pretty good thing for a grandson to carry with him.

The Roots

When I started this chapter, I thought I was writing a thank-you letter to my grandparents.

I’m beginning to realize I’m doing something else too. I’m digging.

Every story I uncover gives me another small piece of how my family became my family.

Some of those roots I was fortunate enough to know.

Some I’m only discovering now.

And some may always remain buried deeper than I’ll ever be able to reach. That’s okay.

Roots don’t have to be visible to hold something up.

Most of my life has been spent looking forward.

The next duty station.

The next rank.

The next challenge.

Marriage.

Children.

Grandchildren.

Retirement.

Always the next thing.

Maybe that’s why this journey has surprised me so much.

The closer I get to the end of one chapter of my life, the more I find myself looking backward.

Not because I want to live there.

Because I’m finally old enough to understand what was there.

So to Grandma and Grandpa, thank you.

And to the grandparents I never had the opportunity to meet, thank you too.

Your part of my story may be harder for me to see.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

We spend most of our lives looking at the branches.

Every once in a while, it’s worth looking down.

Because none of us started where we stand.

Before there were branches…

there were roots.