Her Hands His Eyes is a journal written in real time about writing my book. Every week I open the box a little further. A memory. A photograph. A recipe. This is Entry 6. Start from the beginning with Entry 1. You are reading this as I write it. When the book is ready you will be the first to know. Open The Box.
This was not the week I expected.
I sat down at my desk to go through slides and I thought I was ready. I have been doing this for weeks now. Some slides move me. Some don’t. I have learned to pace myself. To take breaks. To let the grief and the loss of a grandparent sit with me without letting it knock me over.
And then this slide.
Hackensack. 1976.
I picked it up. Held it to the light. And I was not at my desk in Florida anymore.
I turned to Chris and said I remember that day.
He stopped what he was doing.
I told him about the blinds.
The Blinds
I have not thought about those blinds since his funeral in 1992.
And then this slide.
Thirty years gone in an instant.
That is what this box keeps doing to me. It does not just give me back what my father kept. It gives me back what I buried. Things I did not know were still inside me. A six year old girl I thought I had left behind a long time ago.
She keeps showing up in these slides.
I was six years old. 8,600 miles from home. First days in America. My grandparents’ apartment in Hackensack and city noise coming through the walls that I did not have a word for yet in any language anyone here would understand.
So I pulled the blinds down.
I pulled them so hard I broke them.
Six years old. Trying to make America quiet.
I told Chris and he laughed. Of course you did he said.
Of course I did.
That is what writing this book is doing to me. It is not just bringing back the memories I expected. It is bringing back the ones I forgot I had. The loss of a grandparent is not one feeling. It is a thousand small things surfacing when you least expect them. A broken blind. A city noise. A smile in a photograph.
“He just held on. That was enough.”
Grandpa Lloyd
But this photograph was not about the blinds.
It was about his smile.
The two of us cheek to cheek. His smile wide and certain. The smile of a man who had been waiting for you. Not surprised at all by what he felt when you arrived.
And me looking straight at the camera. Directly. Without hesitation.
I was not scared of him.
Whatever the noise. Whatever the strangeness. Whatever the broken blinds in the other room. Grandpa Lloyd made room the moment I got there. He did not ask me to be quieter or braver or more American. He did not ask me to be anything different from exactly what I was. A six year old girl from Korat who had just broken her grandparents’ blinds trying to make America stop.
He just held on.
That was enough.
Children know this without words. They know who is safe. They know who has made room for them. They know it in the body before they know it in the mind.
I knew it in 1976.
I know it now sitting at my desk in Florida holding that slide up to the light.
The loss of a grandparent is its own particular kind of grief. It is the loss of someone who loved you before you knew you needed to be loved that way. Before you understood how rare it was. Before you knew that not everyone would just hold on without asking you to be anything different.
Grandpa Lloyd was that for me.
I did not have the words for it at six.
I have been trying to find them all week.
“Grandpa Lloyd never asked me to be anyone different. He just made room.”
What Chris and I Talked About
After I told him about the blinds we sat together for a while.
We talked about my father. About the boys. About Chris Jr at twelve and Ryan at nine when he passed. About what it meant to have a grandfather who loved you the way Grandpa Lloyd loved. The way my father loved those boys.
Complete. Unconditional. Without asking anything back.
Chris Jr was twelve. Old enough to understand what he was losing. Old enough to feel the weight of it. Ryan was nine. Still young enough that the loss would settle into him slowly over the years in ways he might not always recognize.
My father had that same quality as Grandpa Lloyd. That complete unconditional love for those boys. He did not love them carefully or conditionally or with any reservation at all. He just loved them the way Grandpa Lloyd loved me. Fully. Without hesitation. Without asking them to be anything different from exactly what they were.
That is rare.
That is what we lose when we lose a grandparent. Not just the person. The particular quality of their love. The way it made you feel seen without trying. The way it made room for you before you even walked through the door.
Chris Jr and Ryan felt that. The way I felt it in Hackensack in 1976.
And now my grandchildren are growing up and I think about what it means to love them the way Grandpa Lloyd loved me. The way my father loved Chris Jr and Ryan. Without reservation. Without condition. Just holding on.
That is what this book is really about underneath everything else.
The people who held on.
And what we owe them.
What This Week Cost Me
I did not expect this week to cost me what it did.
I thought I was ready. I am never fully ready. That is what I keep learning. Every slide is a door. Some open gently. Some come off the hinges.
This one came off the hinges.
I sat at my desk and I let the grief and the loss of a grandparent do what they needed to do. I did not push it away. I did not close the laptop and walk away. I stayed with it. I stayed with him. With the six year old girl in that apartment. With the broken blinds. With the smile that made room for everything.
And then I wrote it down.
That is the work. Stay with it. Write it down. Keep going.
Some weeks the box gives you something manageable.
This week it gave me Grandpa Lloyd.
I am glad it did.
What I Know Now
Some people make room for you without being asked.
You spend your whole life grateful for them without always knowing why. And then you are sitting at a desk in Florida fifty years later holding a slide up to the light and you understand exactly why.
Because he just held on.
The loss of a grandparent is not just the loss of a person. It is the loss of the particular way they loved you. The way nobody else loves you in quite that same way again.
I am writing it all down.
For Remi, Samantha, Jackson, Brook, Stetson, and Charlotte.
So they know about Grandpa Lloyd.
So they know about the broken blinds.
So they know about the grandfather who loved Chris Jr and Ryan the way Grandpa Lloyd loved me.
Complete. Unconditional. Without asking anything back.
And so they know to hold on too.
Just like he did.
What Comes Next
This is Entry 6 of Her Hands His Eyes — a memoir written in real time as I open the box.
In Entry 7 the mother image I keep returning to. That is all I will say for now.
