"The first time I held her in my arms ... that was it," he said. "Stick a fork in me ... I'm done."
***
I sat next to my grandfather on the back porch of his home in Virginia. He'd built an addition onto the house just off the kitchen. Grandpa wore khakis and a short sleeved button down dress shirt, a pen tucked into the front pocket. Thin-rimmed bifocals rested on his face and his silver hair nearly covered a barely growing bald spot on top of his head. Although his skin is soft and wrinkled, he’s quite dapper and attractive for a man approaching 90.
My grandpa has gentle, yet stern blue eyes. He seems to always know my emotional state despite the miles that now separate us. We’ve traded places. I live in Manhattan, his old stomping grounds, and he in Virginia, where I grew up. He’s been out of the city nearly 70 years and still speaks with a New York accent. My grandpa has a way with me. He’s the only one I ever let try to tell me what to do. I don’t always do it, but I at least hear him out. He and I have a special relationship. He will be on my mind and I’ll call. He’ll answer and say, 'My ears were burning! I was just thinking about my special girl and here you are calling me.'
***
"I remember when you were about two years old." He likes to tell this story and I like hearing it. "The family was over at your mother's house for an occasion. You were hysterical, crying and carrying on. You were too little to tell anybody what was wrong. No one could calm you down, so Grandpa took you for a ride and we went to a bakery. Your cheeks were streaked with tears. You picked out a danish you wanted from the case and I said to you, 'if you want that danish, you're gonna have to stop crying and tell the lady what you want. And you did. You straightened right up. Hot dog!" He said with a big smile and slapped his knee.
***
"When I met your grandmother we both lived on 170th Street near the Grand Concourse. The neighborhood was mostly Irish, Italian and Jews. Some of my best friends were the Irish. We were part of the 170th Street Gang. About 15 of us guys and girls hung out and we played stick ball, breaking windows," he laughed. "I was a mischievous kid. I was a B student and could have gotten A’s, but I screwed around. I was 17 and a half when I graduated in 1944. Back then they were taking young men to go fight the war as they got out of high school. It was World War II."
***
"I worked as an usher at a local movie theater before the war. I would see your grandmother in the group. I remember looking at her." He shook his head and smiled. "I fell in love right then. My heart went nuts every time I saw her. I remember thinking, 'I don't think I can measure up to that girl.' She was beautiful.
"One day she walked into the lobby of the theater. There were all these pictures of movie stars displayed. The kids would come by and look at them.
"'Would you like to come in?' I said to her. She said, 'Could you?' I said, 'I will.'
"I let her come in to see a picture for free. Later that week my manager pulled me into his office. He took that admission out of my wages. It might have been 35 or 40 cents for a matinee. A few weeks after he pulled me aside. He said, 'You know that little gal you were making eyes at? I'm going to give you two tickets, one for you and one for her.'"
My grandfather smiled as he recalled the moment.
"I was going to a school called Gompers in the South Bronx, an all boys high school. She was going to Taft, a local school, so we didn't get to run into each other. I finally got the nerve to ask a buddy of mine who was in the gang to ask for her number. I called and her mother answered.
"She said, 'I've heard some talk about you, young man. You're going to have to get the approval of her father. Everybody calls him 'Whitey'. He's a tough guy, and she's the apple of his eye.' I remember Whitey said to me, 'You're gonna be gone soon ... you can't cause too much trouble.' I’ll never forget that.
"I took her to the movies. I kept looking at her. We held hands. I don't even know what the movie was about. The first time I held her in my arms ... that was it," he said. "Stick a fork in me ... I'm done. I used to call up to her on the fire escape, ‘I love you! I love you!'
"This beautiful lady agreed to wait for me. We courted for a year and a half and then I went off to war, just before her sweet 16th party. I was all over the Pacific. Pearl Harbor. I was a radio transmitter operator. I kept the transmitters tuned up. I was far away from her, I wrote her letters. I had given her what they call a friendship ring, which meant she wouldn't go out with anyone else. I came home in 1946. I had been gone 2 years.
"When I got out of the service I fell into TV. I helped install the the first transmitters that went up on the Empire State building for ABC, NBC and CBS. I gave 50 years to that industry.
"Your grandmother and me got hitched on Feb 20, 1949. We set up an apartment in Washington Heights. In those days housing was hard to find. Uncle Harry helped me. He was the man, and had connections everywhere.
"Your grandmother worked on what was the very beginning of computers, before typewriters. She kept track of inventory and sales for this company up on Fordham Road ... Alexander's.
"Several years later a buddy of mine, Herb Weiss, talked me and our beautiful wives into going down south together for an easier life outside the city. We were childhood friends and in the service together. Elaine was pregnant with our first child, your mother. She had the baby in Newport News, VA on a 104 degree day in July. No AC.
***
"Your grandmother was one of a kind. When the kids were older she bought patterns at Sears and made special clothes for the girls. She took lessons with Singer sewing machines, and she later got a job selling for the Sears catalog . They sold everything in that catalogue and she was quite a saleswoman. I'll never forget the time I came home from work and she said to me, 'You won’t believe what I sold today!' And I said, 'What?' She said, 'an automobile engine!"
***
"Tell me about your parents again, Grandpa," I said.
He adjusted himself on the couch.
"Let's see ... your Great Grandpa Leopold was on my mother's side. Leopold Damsen. He was taken by a Russian army called the Cossacks when he was 14. They used to come and handpick boys. If you had four they'd take two. He was assigned to a Cossack who taught him to make leather bindings for horses. He would be with them for 3 to 4 years. Because he was Jewish they'd keep him one extra year. Russia was not a democracy, that's how they did things.
"His family put together a telegram or something, calling for him to get to this place on the coast in Poland or Germany. He somehow escaped and made his way, maybe to Bremen. He eventually came through Ellis Island where he changed his name from Damsenovsky to Damsen. He became part of a group of leather workers that made bridals for the horse show at Madison Square Garden. Leopold lived to be 96, and my father lived to be 87.
"And what was Great Grandpa's name again? I remember meeting him when I was little," I said.
"Louis. And my mother was Martha. They lived in the Bronx until they retired and moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He managed a group of resort apartments down there from up north before they eventually moved. He wanted to be in the land of the sunshine. He was a good father. He did whatever he set his mind to.
"At 80 years old he wanted a job so he told the guy, 'Give me the opportunity and you don't have to pay me for one month.’ He was there for 5 years before leaving after falling and getting hurt. They loved him. Dad was Polish. Mom was Russian, and they were both born in the US. Your nanna's side was Russian.”
***
“Do you have any regrets Grandpa?" I asked.
He took a moment. I think it was a hard question for him.
"A buddy of mine wanted me to go back to New York and work as a lawyer with him in the city. I decided to stay in Virginia. I think that's the first big mistake I made. I didn't have enough money to make Elaine really really happy. She deserved it."
His eyes welled a little. My nanna had been gone 32 years. Theirs was true love. I hope to find that some day. For now, I'm the luckiest girl in the world to still have my grandfather. Until next time, dream big!