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What We Remember And Why

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 24, 2008

Updated: 11/24/2008 04:45 pm

Three weeks later I have to ask myself why I still remember. It was so ordinary, so mundane, so easily overlooked.

Waiting on one of those glossy wooden benches in a local mall while my husband browsed through a discount tool shop, I noticed them sitting across from me.

The man was tall, thin and white-haired, his age-spotted hands gnarled by arthritis. His working man's hands were draped around the shoulder of a little girl, about 7-years-old, nestled in the crook of his arm. Her feet were up, stretched along the bench. She was facing away from him.

When they talked, she had to tilt her head up and twist around to see his face. But they didn't talk much. They just snuggled together in what looked like mutual ease and comfort. Once in a while, words would pass between them and the old man would look down across his shoulder with an intimate smile as the child looked up.

With nothing better to do, I found myself watching them from a distance far enough away not to be obvious.

The man's legs were crossed elegantly. He wore dark trousers and a light tan sweater, his beige beret added the perfect touch to the shock of straight silver hair protruding from under its brim. The little girl was dressed in jeans and a yellow sweater that matched her hair.

My mind wandered into their lives and I imagined other times they spent with each other. There was something so comfortable about the way they were sitting linked together. Their posture spoke "family" and broadcast affection. There was no doubt that this was a grandfather and his granddaughter.

I was touched and found myself remembering both my own grandfathers, neither of whom would have been comfortable enough with a young child to have assumed such a position. Can one have retrospective envy?

As we sat, another couple approached the bench and entered our triangular bubble-a man in his 40s and another girl, a bit older than the first one, about 9 or 10, who resembled the child I had been watching. Obviously father and daughter, they connected themselves to the pair I was observing.

The story grew as I realized that I was watching a family. The young man was related to the older one and the girls were sisters. What amazed me was that this new twosome sat down in the same position as the grandfather and granddaughter, the child sliding back under her father's protective arm.

"How lovely," I thought, that two men could show such obvious caring about these two little girls. How nice that the children fit into the familiar embrace so casually. How wonderful that they were all so physically comfortable with each other.

Somehow, I felt like a voyeur intruding on an intimate family moment.

I thought about my own father and the times I sat in his lap while he read Robert Louis Stevenson's poetry to me from a small red cloth-covered book with gold lettering on the spine. I thought of my husband and of all the times I had seen him embrace our daughter, protecting her and explaining the world to her.

The vignette disappeared as my husband emerged from his browsing and I rose to join him. We walked away from the benches and although I turned my back, the vision of those four people had imprinted itself on my memory.

I have thought of that tableau often in the past three weeks and it has given me comfort. For whatever reason-fathers and daughters, grandfathers and granddaughters, intergenerational relationships-it touched a chord in me that continues to vibrate.

Perhaps it is the parent in me that responded, or the grandparent, or the used-to-be child. But the affection of those two men for those two children was both reassuring and rewarding to see. I wonder that something so ordinary can be so powerful.

Judy Kramer can be reached by e-mail at JudyandOz@tampabay.rr.com.

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