If you know me, then you know my relationship with my family is a point of tumult for me. Never easy, always shifting, but never actually changing its face, my interaction with my relatives is a painful sore on the butt of my life.
So you can imagine my surprise when unexpectedly, I hear from my 85 year old grandparents yesterday. I have not been their favorite atheist, mostly liberal, oft without employ grandson over the years. They called me at work saying they were in town and would like to meet with me after my shift was over. They wanted to see my new home, meet my fiancée and see my similar to theirs, part Italian-part Mexican face.
Thoughts were swirling. Past events, their current political beliefs, possible scenarios… I was bubbling with anxiety about seeing them.
“Maybe I shouldn’t see them?”
“They are old and might pass on soon, never mind their once horrible treatment of you, they are part of you. You must.”
I decided I would meet with them.
It went smoothly. They were too old to grill me or ridicule me. I, too moderately successful for them to tell me I was nothing. I took the chance of asking my Grandfather about his history so as to garner some insight to my history, being the self-serving bastard they have always thought I was destined to be.
What I heard thru his hate for the current administration, thru his louding of the merits of his beloved Las Vegas mayor (“He has the showgirls on his arms, the martini in his hands! He is a stand-up guy. Told Obama to shove it!”)… thru all of this I hear some truth.
He told me of how his father, my great-grandfather Ernesto Scolari came over from Lombardia, Italy and bootlegged his way up the Mexico coast all the way to California. My grandfather was sent for and arrived in Petaluma where his father had settled, only to have his father arrested for bootlegging. His father was released and the family moved to Richmond, CA, the place of my birth and into the local industrial barracks. World War II broke out and my family was given 30 days to “move to the other side of San Pablo Avenue” for quarantine. My grandfather’s best friend Jimmy Ito, a Japanese neighbor was not so fortunate to have to relocate. He and his family were sent to camps.
After telling this story, my “Grandpo” as we call him, said something that hung in me.
“People have always been scared. It’s silly. And they start doing horrible things when they are scared.”
Thru all my Grandpa’s forsaking of heritage I have seen (his wife, Rosa Gonzalez, my grandmother, tho born in Mexico, has forsaken her “Mexican” title for the more “AMERICAN!” friendly term, “Mestizo”. Same thing, folks.), I saw a glimpse of honesty in what he had just said. A shred of what everybody knows deep down, coming out of him for the first time. I told him I had found a “McCarthy for President” button that I had saved years back. He laughed, understood I was referencing a "fear monger", and told me he was not THAT old.
I eat Stella Dora cookies with my coffee, crave a good salami, believe in Murphy’s Law and would rather have a poster of a kitten clawing to hang onto a branch with a caption reading, “OH SHIT!” hanging in my office, than a picture of Joseph McCarthy… just like my Grandpo. People sometimes chill out in their old age. Right on for that. Glad I took a chance and greeted the situation with love, as opposed to fear.
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