The Love Boat

“It is just so sad.” 

“I am just so sad.”

I spoke into the portable phone as I wandered around our Grandparent’s home from room to room still not quite believing that the day everyone knows is inevitable had actually come.

My brother, Flint listening on the other end of the line finally replied,

“No, I get it.”

“I mean all I want to do is go back in time to lying on the carpet watching The Love Boat with them while doing water colors on Grandpa’s cardboard shirt inserts…”

I don’t remember what else he said because I was off remembering the feel of the carpet, our Grandmother rooting around in our Grandfather’s closet for more cardboard and my frustration when the colors got muddied. Over the next few weeks sandwiched between old magazines and in the back of drawers I found them one by one and each time The Love Boat theme song would play in my head.

His and Hers

My grandfather never really took off his eye-glasses, my grandmother up until the end would take her's off for the most casual snapshot. In his professional portraits his glasses made him look like the serious business man he was but for her the connotations associated with eyeglasses did not fit the image she was projecting so as soon as a camera appeared she automatically took off her eye-glasses, tilted her head, turned 3/4 and bent one knee ever so slightly. There. Perfect.

Ladies wear two inch heels

My grandmother wore a suit or a dress with (2-inch "None of this foolish stiletto business"- she would say) heels every single day up until my grandfather's death when she began to wear slacks and flats for the first time. As a child I would spend hours in her closet playing shoe store which as you can see didn't require much imagination. The ones that still had wear in them we cleaned up and donated but most were so worn they had to be thrown away but those of course were the ones that you could tell had been favorites; the ones that had molded to the shape of her foot; that had traipsed all over the world and back again.

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