small spaces
I have one memory, really, of my grandfather. I hold onto it like an old photo in my wallet. I’m three-years-old and he is making me mac and cheese. I stand on a stool to his left, hovering eagerly over the age-marked pot. The house only holds the two of us and it feels so empty. We don’t speak the same language so the smell of melted mozzarella and whirring stovetop fan fills the space for conversation. He moves the pot, and out of curiosity I touch the abandoned stove, and surprisingly burn my finger. Grandpa abruptly pulls back, but quickly scrambles to find a kiddie bandage and an aloe leaf plucked from an old stone pot beside the dinner table to wrap around my burnt appendage. I stare at the little green leaf pressed against the blue snowflake patterned bandage on my finger and laugh at how ridiculous it looked. Grandpa laughs too. I didn’t understand that aloe helped heal burns, he didn’t understand me. Grandpa didn’t speak much English, he never did. My glance is fixed to the glass table which reflects a ray of sunshine passing through the window. He pours the mac and cheese into a bowl, soothed my wails, and eats with me in silence.
Twelve years later that’s all I remember of him.
***
My grandparents live in a one floor bungalow. A well suited space for an elderly couple continuing their lives after their children grew into suburban houses with children of their own. The rooms were never particularly large, and the kitchen never had enough counter space to hold the weekly feasts my grandmother would cook up for the whole family. Family dinners were when the conversation was the most heated. We’d squeeze ten seats around the clear glass table, and then a few more standing in the squared doorway leading kitchen. Our elbows would sometimes bump and those closest to the window were entrusted to not knock the small collection of stone potted plants propped by it. The food only made sense engulfed in conversation. The cacophony of squabbling siblings both old and young paired well with fresh beef broth noodles and sweet crispy watermelon for dessert. The house felt the most alive when we were all in it. Uncles, aunts, and even my english-abiding grandparents would actively engage in the discourse that filled up their house. In the cooling seasons the conversation often steered towards the sport of figure skating. Family functions would hold hints of the sport’s politics, or the athletes favoured to win Worlds that year. Fall 2009 was no different, especially approaching the Winter Olympics.
My first time seeing the Winter Olympics was watching Yuna Kim and Mao Asada glide across the tiny tin grey box TV displayed above my grandfather’s bed. Through the undersaturated static filled screen and dampened volume, an eight-year-old version of me saw twenty-year-old Yuna Kim win her first Olympics ever. In that tiny television hanging high above my head, I discovered a whole array of sports. Curling, speedskating, even bobsleigh. Truely, it’d be impossible to watch all the Olympic screenings, but I had thought I did. Even through the small screen I was mesmerized. Yuna’s royal blue dress dancing with the quick piano concerto made the hollow hospital hallways less lonely. Less bleak. Less confusing.
Winter 2010 became a dance of its own. Hospital, home, school, hospital, home, school, and again. Piano lessons and single-digit addition melded with the smell of sterile blankets and hushed conversations. The family brought their Olympic discussion into a closed cornered room and shared silence with droning beeps of the various machines attached to my grandfather. Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir won Canada a Gold for ice dance. Weeks would pass and the conversation got brought back to my grandparents’ house. A makeshift space housed his hospital bed and the house was filled with discussion once again. We’d visit often. Weekly feasts would now include rotations into Grandpa’s room between the chittering. We needed to spend time with family to build memories while we could, or at least that is what my mother said. I don’t remember it.
August’s eve paved the way for a new school year of two-digit addition and more piano. Grandpa was back in the hospital again. We were back to visiting him again. It was a routine. The day before the first day of school my friend invited me over for a birthday party. My dad walks me over, my mom visits the hospital. We watch Camp Rock 2 and scream louder than hospitals would allow us to. I wake up with a smile in front of a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. My mom is the last to come downstairs. She pulls me into the piano room with silence between her words.
“Last night, grandpa passed away”.
She lets out a breath which sounds more like a sob. My eyes meet hers. They’re wet like glass marbles under moonlight. I only have time to say “I didn’t get to say goodbye” before my face becomes wet like hers and she pulls me into a hug. I think that is the only time I’ve ever felt her needing my embrace.
Our weekly dinner discussions naturally shifted into a somber tone and subsided shortly after to accommodate the suffocating presence of grief. We prayed for Grandpa in Temple, and watched his body burn into the black box that fit into grandma’s ashen hands as she placed it into his grave. Seasons passed, our lives continued, families move away, and Sochi 2014 was around the corner. We watch at Grandma’s house, squeezed into a table that now fits the ten of us left.