Paper Tales...

When Brent's grandmother died I spent a day going through her house. Looking in the closets, pulling out paperwork. Digging around in her things. Her lawyers had suggested that we should. I've talked before about the lack of a relationship with her. There were reasons, I put it on her, I'm sure she put it on us, or on me. But there was no relationship there. But she left her house and all of the contents to Christopher when she died.

It wasn't an inheritance out of a sense of love for him, she had never met him, it was purely a fuck you to Brent and to Ann. One of the things I found when going through all the paperwork was the Christmas letter from us where she had done the math to figure out when Christopher would be 18 and she could bypass us completely for him to get the money. 

That was one of the only glimpses I got of who she was by going through the house. I had hoped the whole time to find something, anything, that would help me understand her. A diary. Letters. Anything.  And I left pretty much empty handed. 

Sort of.

I mean, I actually did get a good glimpse into who she was, I just didn't realize it at first. I got pieces that made more sense once I talked to Ann. And I got pieces that make a lot of sense after going through all of Ann's things last month. 

Because Ann did keep all of those things that I was hoping to find in Dona's house. Old letters between friends and from Jack. Christmas letters that Jack used to write. Old books of poetry and prose that they both worked on. And the saddest thing for me. The piece I haven't been able to shake out of my head and that explains so much of the family history. 

It was a little booklet of things that Ann had made for Dona when Ann had to have been somewhere between 6-8. The cover of it was a note to Dona that said it was a book of things for her to look at "when she gets so mad at her." Then the book is full of perfect school papers. Penmanship, math, spelling, all grade school things with gold stars and 100% grades. It made me cry. 

Okay, sure, I was crying a lot anyway, but still. That little girl's pain reached across 60+ years and grabbed me by the face and made me look and not turn away. For when you are so mad at me? That part was bad enough, but then the things that were in there, not a cutesy turn of when you get mad at the mud prints in the house see the flowers I picked for you or when you see the jelly smeared on the counter see the breakfast in bed I made...but an actual when you are so mad at me see how perfect my school papers are.  Oof...

And then the topper, this wasn't in Dona's things, this was in Ann's. She had kept it. Not her mother that she had made it for. Dona didn't even keep the book. Just....

And it made me think of some of the things that Dona had kept. She kept things that Sheldon's father had sent him during his travels, and things from Easter mornings where she would make a sort of scavenger hunt for Sheldon to find his Easter basket. The postcards were always educational things. No, Hey, Buddy! I miss you and can't wait to get home and play ball! And he might have sent those as well, but Dona didn't keep those. And the scavenger hunt was all education trivia type questions Sheldon would have had to answer to get the next clue. It made me wonder if those were fun mornings or miserable. 

Sheldon was Ann's half brother but he was only a year older than Brent. Dona would constantly nag at Sheldon for not being as smart as Brent. Because he wasn't. It had to make her mad on a few levels. His father was a professor, she was as well. She had to have thought Sheldon was going to be brilliant. And he just wasn't. I would guess he was fine, probably above average even, but not quite at Brent's level. And Ann insisted on raising Brent instead of letting her mother call all of the shots. I know right? How very dare she. 

But anyway, seeing the book from Ann with the perfect papers and seeing the things Dona felt were important to keep from Sheldon's childhood it made me think, again, about how much she missed out with Christopher. 

Intelligence was important to her and, not an exaggeration, Christopher is a genius. She missed being able to enjoy that. To be able to talk to him and see how fast ideas would form and move through his head when he was younger. It was amazing. They redid the way they test gifted students at the school he went to in Colorado Springs because of him. Now, because of who she was I can't say for sure that she would have been able to enjoy him even if she had somehow managed to swallow her pride and try for a relationship with us. We were his parents. We were very set in our ways of parenting. It was our job to be the parents, it was the grandparents job to fawn on him and tell him he was awesome. I'm not sure she would have been able to handle the no interference rules. But she could have at least tried. 

But then....

Dona showed me who she was in what she kept. She put pictures up of Ann when she was a child, but none after she and Jack were married. She had pictures of Brent and Sheldon when they were little but not the wedding photo we sent her. She had pictures of Christopher from the Christmas cards and letters we sent. Walking through her house you would think it was like any other older woman in a retirement community's space. Pictures of her loving family on the walls and bookshelves. But they were just pictures. No relationships. The only letter she kept from us was the one she used to figure out how leave a message from beyond the grave. 

Ann had pictures up in her house as well. Of all of us. Of Jack. Of Brent when he was younger. Of a toddler Christopher up to a graduation shot from college. She also had letters and notes from us tucked away. And a couple of pictures I had taken of her and of us. And of course all of things we had bought for her and for Jack over the years. And...well...evidence of actual relationships. 

That box of things from her childhood made me so sad for the little girl she was. For the life she led. And it also reinforced, one more time, that though our relationship with her and with Jack was often complicated and fraught with hidden landmines, we all tried. We all worked on it. And we all loved each other. 

No fuck yous from beyond the grave needed.