Raised by Royalty

As their eldest grandchild, I’d always been acutely aware that my grandparents attracted an inordinate amount of attention. Growing up, there wasn’t a post office, pharmacy, or diner that didn’t greet my grandparents with an outpouring of admiration and affection, “Look who it is! Ann and Bob!”  My grandpa was admitted to the hospital once for a minor infection and on the day he was discharged, staff members lined up to take selfies with him and my grandma, calling them “legends” and my grandma a “Queen”. It took me getting older to appreciate the unprecedented access I had to their humble, New Jersey kingdom.  

As a child, my grandparents were never far. Growing up, they lived twenty minutes away and my family would drive to their tiny, yellow house weekly for Sunday dinners. My grandpa, Bob, would greet us at the door with a smile and a pinch on the nose. “Get in here you turkeys!”

My grandma, Ann, is a tiny Italian matriarch who always dressed to the nines with her hair perfectly coifed. She charmed every room she entered with her poise, matter of fact way of speaking, and wisdom on every topic from how to clean a sink to how to avoid marrying the wrong person.  (“You’ve gotta marry someone who likes to eat!”).  She smothered me with kisses and I loved being engulfed in her signature scent of White Diamonds perfume, sitting at the table, and feasting on her antipasti and meatballs. Mostly, I loved the feeling of warmth and love I felt every time I stepped into my grandparents’ cozy home.

My sisters and I had sleepovers at my grandparents’ house at least once a month. We watched old Judy Garland musicals and ate Entenmann’s donuts. In the mornings, we went to the diner for pancakes and when it was nice out, we would play badminton in their big back yard. On summer vacations, my grandparents took us down the shore, to the carnival around the corner from their house, and we frequented Friendly’s for ice cream sundaes. These are the memories that fill my heart when I think of my childhood.

As the years ticked on my visits with grandparents became less playful. As a teenager, I had the typical juvenile angst of boys and friends and schoolwork and I filled my time with peers my own age. Sleepovers came to a halt, and Sunday dinners were mostly spent thinking about when I’d get back home to chat online with friends. “Is it almost time to leave?” I’d moan as separation anxiety from the computer set in.

At 21, I moved to New York City and had a chaotic, arcade game of a life that included crippling career anxiety and fleeting bouts of depression. I started chasing a career, chasing fame, chasing men. My grandparents became secondary figures as I dealt with the constant, in-your-face drama of my Big City life. They were in their fifties when I was born! What would we possibly talk about now? What did they possibly know?

In fact, I started to know more than they did. When I did travel back to New Jersey from the city, our visits revolved mostly around me helping them with their tech troubles and answering questions surrounding my modern-day life. “So Jill, if we buy a computer, we should ask for one with Google on it, right?”

I marveled at their bewilderment and was quick to educate them on how savvy I was. “Everyone uses Google”, “You don’t need to write checks anymore”, “People order groceries through the phone now.” Though I still loved them dearly, it was harder for me to connect. Their home felt smaller to me then, like a museum of long-ago memories. I itched to get back to my fast-paced, confusing life in New York.   

But as time went on, I began to soften and mature a bit. After years of rejection, break ups, and career hardship, I started to understand that I was not the main character in a romanticized TV series and stopped reacting to each of life’s setbacks as monumental crises. At 29, I moved out of New York City and back to New Jersey to do some soul searching.

I began spending more quality time with my grandparents then, and even lived with them while trying to sort things out. I moved into my mother’s childhood bedroom and was reminded of all their routines from when I was a girl. Their activities were still intact: daily morning walks, 20/20 on Friday nights, IHOP on Saturdays, church on Sundays followed by a trip to the diner. I joined them for all of it; a satisfying change after chasing my tail for so long.

A shift had taken place. I was no longer a child, an angsty teen, or a distracted twenty-something. I was now a woman who was capable of spending time with my grandparents and seeing them as more than two cute people who’d served me chocolate pudding snacks and didn’t understand how Uber worked. What I saw now were two people who’d had their own lives, and I had a sudden and strong interest in knowing more about them.

Stories I’d heard before that had previously fallen on deaf ears became new to me. I’d always known my grandparents met when they were 20 years old, but now that information meant something different. I thought back to ten years earlier, when I was 20 myself, and imagined exes still sitting by my side, and again 50 years later. My quest for knowledge about my grandparents became insatiable.

Learning details about their youth started changing me in a pivotal way. Deep into the nights, grandma would confide in me like two girlfriends at a sleepover. “People didn’t think grandpa and I should get married,” she’d whisper over biscotti. “They thought we were too different from one another, but don’t go by what other people say – you have to trust your heart!” She pounded her chest for good measure, and grandpa raised his tea in solidarity. “Up their nose!” she added to drive home the point.

 While looking through old photos together, I asked about their personal experiences throughout history: The Great Depression, my grandpa’s time in the military, the assassination of JFK. The only national tragedy I’d experienced was 9/11 at age 19. I was in a college when someone interrupted class to tell us to turn on the TV. Similarly, my grandpa was in a movie theater on Pearl Harbor Day when they interrupted the film to report that America had been attacked.

 Their accounts of history started making a big impact, as did becoming an astute observer of their daily interactions. I began to appreciate the comedy of my grandparents’ everyday life in ways I hadn’t before. Grandma regularly regaled grandpa with the minutia of her day, never leaving out the tiniest detail and huffing if he missed what she considered to be an important detail. She’d eyeball me and whisper as if to clue me in on some big secret, “Jill, men don’t get it.”

 Meanwhile, grandpa, the English-Scotsman, repeated a rolodex of memorized Kipling poems throughout the day, interspersing them with his beloved Churchill quotes. Their unique little circus became more entertaining to me than anything I could have found on TV.

My grandparents had lived two novels worth of fortune and heartache; most of which I’d known nothing about. My experience as their grandchild fooled me into seeing them as two quaint, sugar-coated figures and short-changed me from understanding who they really are: perceptive, insightful, valiant individuals. Once I became curious, I learned about their life’s principles and values and became aware of how my nature was so tied to their history. So much of the turmoil they’d overcome stemmed from their strong alignment on issues surrounding matters of the heart and integrity. This left an indelible mark on me, and I began to incorporate their spirit and resolve into my own life. I was ready to set out and live on my own again with their wisdom and character as a guidepost.

After some months, I moved back to New York, and took with me our time together. It was much smoother sailing when I caught my second wind in Manhattan. I wasn’t chasing now. My feet were more firmly planted to the ground.

I stayed in the city another few years, then moved out to Colorado. In mid-2020, I came back to New Jersey to stay with my grandparents temporarily during the pandemic, making sure they were taken care of while living in a Covid hot bed. I was closer to 40 then; they were both 90. I’d gone through another system upload by then, an upgrade that accompanies another ten years of experiences in the world. In their company, however, I was again reminded that I have so much to learn. Perhaps that’s why grandpa still addresses anyone under age 65 as “kid”.

Grandma and grandpa will be married 70 years this November. They still live in that same, tiny, yellow house they’ve lived in for 60 years. They are “Legends” at every diner, pharmacy, supermarket, and bakery within a 30-mile radius of their home; New Jersey Royalty.

 What could my grandparents possibly teach me? A lot. What could they possibly know? Everything. I’m glad I started listening.