I remember my tall, awkward self trying to breathe through my hammering heart, fear staining the pits of my brown men’s undershirt as I nervously re-rolled the waist of my oversized cut-off polyester pants (the start of my early 90s grunge/skater phase) before I knocked on my grandpa’s enormous chunky wood front door with no really flat section that wouldn’t knock your knuckles right back.

And a door latch that still scared me wouldn’t work.

As a little girl, barely tall enough to reach the door handle but adventurous enough to sneak out of the house to romp amongst the olive trees, pet the soft creamy underside of the lone wondering cow or pat the snout of the pokey-haired pig in the sun-bleached golden grasses that hid foxburrs that snagged in my turned down lace socks…I had been locked out countless times due to my inability to squeeze the bronze metal tongue thing hard enough to click the latch.

Or one of my uncles, in their teens at the time, thought it a hoot to lock me out.

But as a thirteen something or other, I had been given an assignment at school. And that day I wasn’t greeted at the door by my grandfather with a cheerful chuckle from the tree-top heights of my family’s signature all legs forever — that skipped me, and made it slightly more easy to buy pants — and a “Hello, Poopsie.”

No.

I had a thin, “Come in,” made thinner by the wood and stucco barrier.

With a stomach hiccup and heart flutter, I gripped the door handle and pushed the dreaded bronze tab.

It clicked and the door moved in release.

With an internal conflict of old childhood relief and very new teenage anxiety, I swung open the door.

The house was never bright. In a land of sun and egg-frying heat half the year that cave like quality made for a respite. Usually.

Now it just seems shadowed. Ominous.

Hallow.

My grandpa stood from his recliner in the living room when I passed the beyond the tiled entrance way and hit brown shag with my magenta high-top Converses. Pushed down socks. Drooping.

He was a long stick of a man with a pot belly, his body making the shape of a letter that didn’t quite exist. It made hugging him a body-curving experience. Usually.

“Let’s sit at the table.” He indicated the doily-runnered, eight-seated dining room table, as chunky as the front door and ornate enough for Christmas Mass.

No hug.

We sat.

He folded himself down at the foot of the table, usually held by my grandmother. I slid onto the hard dark wood polished to a worn shine by decades of shifting thighs and butts.

My stomach burned. Nerve acid.

No giant ham stabbed with maraschino cherries leading a parade of family potluck food transported lovingly in pale mint green and lemon yellow Tupperware graced the table.

Just the long doily that always remained, dependable, covered only on special occasions with a decorative addition to tell the season.

There wasn’t even a basket of fake flowers as a centerpiece.

The barest of tables.

Where I set my tape recorder down.

I looked at him, eyes darting, asking.

He nodded, slow. Heavy. His arm draped and limp, elbow collapsed on the table.

I hit record. The tiny cassette tape began to turn.

I cleared my throat of as much of my heart as I could before I started.

I now know my fear. Not of something happening to me. Not at all. I was nervous because something was about to happen to him.

Something very hard.

Something I asked him to do, a young teenager, given an assignment from an all-important teacher at school. An assignment I had to do.

At thirteen, a straight A student, to not do it was akin to life and death.

And it felt that way.

What I was about to ask him felt wrong, and I had no tools, no assistance from said teacher to do it right, to do it the gentlest, most supportive…

I had the deepest desire to do it the very best way possible, with the most love and support and respect for him ——and I had absolutely no skills to help me succeed in any way.

So I started the only way I knew how.

“Grandpa, please tell me about when you fought in World War II.”

Old feelings, memories of that conversation — how we both fumbled, both asking and telling as little as possible. Getting it over with as fast as possible while still meeting the afore-agreed-upon goal. The sadness. The walls…

It wasn’t worth the grade or any grade.

I remember fleeing with a deep heartache that I feel now, now being worn with age, but the regret is still stinging my eyes this morning, clenching my throat.

I am sad for both of us.

And there wasn’t a “Hello, Poopsie” greeting for a while after that.

But I don’t regret it for that. Nor do I think we shouldn’t know the stories, the lives of those that came before.

Far from it.

We don’t talk to our elders, or each other, enough. Who are you? What have you experienced? There is so much I could learn from you that I could never learn on my own.

Will you honor me with your share? With your story?

And what do I need to do to earn that story?

We don’t talk to each other enough, ask enough, to have built those skills. To be able to read when you’ve pushed too far, how to distract and move around a sensitive subject. Even to know how to just hold a silence, and that is OK. Give time, give space.

Let the story come.

December 7 ^th is a couple days away. I stood on the site of the USS Arizona in Hawaii many years ago, the ship’s carcass just bare inches from the water’s surface. But just enough…I was deeply moved. And thought of my grandfather.

And I am thinking of him now.

I did not have the skills to support my desire to know his story. Even before he passed away.

I wish and hope someone else with those skills and heart had heard his story, what he was willing to reveal. That they earned to hear. Had reached out to him, without an assignment and sweaty palms, but just out of seeing a story that could be told. A precious person with a different point of view, a different experience at life. That could be learned from.

My blessings on everyone and everyone’s stories.

May someone be strong enough to earn the hearing of them.

May we be brave enough to tell them.