Some time after my father died, I called my grandfather up and asked if I could live with him. At age 17, I lived with him, my father's sister, Kathy, and my cousin, Todd. It was a crowded scene over at Grandpa's, but I felt really at home. I liked spending time with my dad's family. They always wanted to help in taking care of me. And I certainly couldn't take care of myself yet, so the arrangement worked well for me.
When I moved in, he sat me down for a talk.
"You're going to pay me $100 a month rent," he said. "I'll feed you, but you need to get a job so you can buy whatever else you need."
I discussed this with
my cousin Todd, and it soon became clear that the rent was not always
$100. Todd paid rent as well. And Grandpa was always mad at one of us,
I think because he had flashbacks to raising his own teenagers.
"Pat, Judi, uh, I mean Todd, Nicole, hush up down there! Are you
drinking beer down there?" he'd yell down into my cousin's basement
room, which was once my father Pat's.
"No, Gramps," Todd would yell while I giggled. "Nic's just helping me with my homework." Of course, we were drinking beer, something watery and nasty, like Milwaukee's Best in the can. Todd was in high school, and I was barely in college. I love him like a brother.
We figured out that Grandpa would charge one of us $100, and the one he was mad at $150, so between us Todd and I worked it out so that we'd make it. After we had our 'rent chat' with Grandpa each month, we'd meet downstairs or up in my room (he never did go up or down the stairs much, since his room was on the ground floor), and we would try to figure out what the $150 renter of the month had done.
Grandpa loved us like his own children, maybe even in a kinder way, but
he certainly stayed feisty until the end. Usually the offending episode
would be something like not hearing a comment he made, or making it home
for dinner too few times that month. I think he missed us when young life
took us away. Maybe he missed his youth as well.
My grandpa helped me overcome my fear of many things. My father was the only one on that side of the family to have obtained a college education. My grandfather not only assumed, he expected that I would do the same. Every night at dinner when I lived with him, he asked me questions about school, just as my father had. In fact, the wording was almost the same.
"What did you learn in school today, Nicole? You've got to do a good job at school, now."
I knew he cared to see me succeed at the things that were important to me, maybe because he knew those things meant so much to my dad as well. I knew he was watching, and that made me toe the line and try to grow into a useful, productive adult. I wish he'd been around by the time I finally did graduate from college.
He believed in me.