Original Paintings

I met my grandpa when I was 15. He is my mother’s father, a tall man with a booming voice and a boisterous personality. We met when he arrived, unannounced, at our house one day. The perplexing aspect of this encounter was that, although he did not resemble my mom, nor did I have any specific memories of him, I somehow recognized him. I was unaware why he and my mom had stopped talking, or why he had disappeared from our lives, but I somehow knew my mom would not want to see him. While he mingled with my dad and introduced himself to my younger siblings, I snuck away to call my mom, who had been out of the house that day with her friend. She was grateful for the warning and did not come home until several hours later, when her father was long gone. He called and left a message for her that night. Sometime in the days that followed, she returned the call.

If I were to look through my family’s old photo albums, I would see my grandpa in many of them. There are pictures of us together, from my birth up to around six years old. From there, he disappears.