The thing my grandparents didn't teach me

My maternal grandparents were simple people of uninquisitive intellect and grossly limited means. They were also the center of my world.

Their few sticks of furniture didn't match. Their clothes came from such emporia as Woolworth's, Federal's, and Sears. They took their meals at the kitchen table or before their black-and-white TV. Went for fish-and-chips Friday nights at that little fish joint on Gratiot called the Riviera.

Joe drove a black Ford Falcon with three on the tree. Leona didn't drive.

They let my brother and me stay overnight for a couple of weeks at a time. Bought us breakable toys at Woolworth's and Kresge's. Let us drink pop by the gallon and scarf stove-cooked fudge with two hands. Took us to the Riviera if we happened to be over on Fridays.

They didn't read books, go to movies, vacation. Joe's favorite pastimes were drinking Stroh's beer, smoking Old Golds, solving Detroit News crossword puzzles, listening to radio broadcasts of Detroit Tigers baseball games, doing all of those things simultaneously. Leona's were watching As the World Turns, playing canasta, knitting, and catching up on gossip over coffee consumed at the kitchen table.

My grandfather laboriously cut the grass with a manual reel mower. My grandmother made egg noodles from scratch and kept a lace-trimmed hankie up her sleeve.

More than my mother or my father or my stepfather or anyone, Joe and Leona taught me how to love my babies. How to listen to them, laugh with them, play with them, hug them, spoil them as needed.

They also tried, through casual slurs and routine critical comments, to teach me the basics of bigotry the way their parents and grandparents had taught those basics to them. But, thankfully, the lessons never took.

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