(I know most of my content is free, but occasionally I like to write for a cozier, closer-knit audience. This piece is a bit more personal, so I thought I’d share it with paid subscribers only. If you aren’t a paid subscriber but want to become one, just follow the link that appears below. Either way, I’m glad you’re here. 🖤)
My grandmother died in 2018 at the age of 91. She was born in Germany in 1926, married an American soldier after the war ended, and emigrated to the US when she was pregnant with my aunt. She settled in El Paso near my grandpa’s family and had my dad a few years later.
I didn’t have a relationship with her until the last decade of her life.
I was in college when it happened. It was a snowy day, and I had called my dad weeks ago to get her phone number. I’m not entirely sure why I did. My dad had been estranged from his father for decades, and my contact with my paternal grandparents was sporadic since childhood.
Then there was college. Or at least, the first three years of it. I was depressed and isolated—queer and didn’t know it, with a terrible haircut and major sense of culture shock from trying to fit in at my hyper-conservative religious school.
I hadn’t found my people yet. I didn’t even know such people existed.
Meanwhile, the phone number had been burning a hole in my pocket for weeks.
So, feeling alone and out of place, and trying not to slip on the icy sidewalk between the school and my off-campus housing, I called my grandmother for the first time in my life.
“Hallo?”
Her voice was warbly and sharp, just as I remembered it. She had a thick German accent, even though she lived in the states far longer than she ever lived in Germany.
I had to explain who I was—me, her granddaughter, who she hadn’t seen or spoken to in years. She seemed surprised, but not unfriendly. We talked about the weather for a while—me, walking home in the snow near the Wasatch mountain range, and her, sitting in a sunken-in recliner in a tiny little house in the El Paso desert.
“It’s cold there, ja?”
I told her it was, and she told me a story about when she and her sister crossed the Danube river while it was frozen solid. I’d heard many stories about her from my father, but this was one I’d never heard before.
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