While they’re still with you.

There’s only been one date when something a guy has said stuck with me long after.

After Mediterranean food, we were taking a walk. In icy evening air, as we fell into step with each other’s stroll, he spoke lovingly of his grandmother and mostly of her legendary Japanese cooking. He shared that the methods of her recipes and their contents were such well-kept secrets while she was alive that cousins would compete to see who could best replicate her most beloved meals.

No one was ever able to reproduce the same results, but they never gave up trying.

After sharing this, he said: “If I have one piece of advice, it’s to spend as much time with your grandparents as you can while they’re still with you.”

“Spend as much time with your grandparents as you can while they’re still with you.”

I remember his words often.

They still ping through my head and inspire me to initiate a visit, to request a new recipe to try from my grandmas, or to ask my grandpa for a music recommendation from his collection of dusty vinyls.

After a visit with my grandparents, I always leave them feeling fuller than when I came—heart and soul.

But it’s stretching to learn how to relate to a generation so far ahead of my own. When you’re in your eighties, what do you even care about? What topics are interesting? Eighty-year-olds don’t give a shit about small talk and they tell you, so it takes a certain conversational creativity to engage them.

But I’ve fallen in love with the elderly simply because they respond to my curiosity with a depth and richness of a life lived.

And they don’t hold back.

Time with my grandparents is like an invitation into the nostalgia of an era I didn’t live. Through them, I get to experience a time I’ll never know firsthand. Like well-worn novels, they paint the picture of a different period for me. My questions of “what was that like?” and “how did you feel when that happened?” make them turn back the pages of their history and remember, and while they’re remembering, I’m discovering.

And that’s an exquisite collision.

One of my favorite days with my grandparents was a St. Patrick’s Day where they invited me to see an amateur production of the Barber of Seville—an Italian opera.

My grandpa performed in operas in his youth, leaving the stage because in his crude words, “I kept knocking up your grandma and we had too many kids to take care of at home” referring to my dad and his three brothers.

As soon as I arrived at their house to make the hour-drive with them to the theater, my grandpa pushed a pamphlet into my hands. It was a CD insert belonging to the album of the opera we were heading to see.

“Read this on the drive so you know what’s going on. You won’t understand all the Italian. This tells the story so you’ll know what’s happening.”  

They insisted I sit in the front seat of their dark blue Saturn. We chatted about dogs and motorcycles and the great grand babies as we rode through hills of lime green grass. The conversation was lively and engaging and I realized while in it how thankful I am to have mentally alert, healthy grandparents.

However, my grandpa, in his impatience, would later walk out into moving traffic annoyed by the lights he personally felt were changing too slowly.

Chock this up to dimwittedness or the elderly’s earned right to give life the birdie every now and then—either way, all three of us nearly died.  

Once in the theater, I was surrounded by the geriatric population of Livermore and I couldn’t help but notice that I was finally in my type of crowd. As we waited for the show to begin, I learned that any conversation about any subject could be struck by turning around in your seat and just beginning a sentence to the person behind you.

No introduction. No segue between topics. 

This is elderly etiquette: you want to talk about your granddaughter in Maine? Just start talking about her. You want to let your neighbor know that in 1972 you saw a completely different opera? I’m sure they were wondering. Go ahead and just cut into the story like you were talking about it for the last five minutes. No context? No problem. They’ll catch on.

During the opera, my grandpa kept making side comments, clapping before the rest of the audience, and talking way too loudly. My father is becoming his father at a rapid pace and I wonder if he knows it. 

I found out that operas are storylines with a thin plot and Italian translated is disappointingly unromantic, but it was fun. By the end of the first act, I was wondering if I had what it took to consume another half. It’s surprising how much energy it takes to sustain the intention of appreciating something foreign to you. The focus it took to consume the music, the costumes, the artistry, the vocal range, the changing sets, and follow the storyline via subtitles was all a mental workout.

That show felt like it was days long, but the music was nourishing. 

We drove back to Rio Vista and my grandpa gushed about his love for Mario Lanza—his musical hero.

He talked of Lanza’s slow shift from mariachi to opera to classical as a teenager. This led to questions about how my grandparents ended up having four boys and what it was like for my German grandmother to marry into a Mexican family and vice versa.

These were so many of the questions I hoped I’d get the opportunity to ask them. Those car rides were answered prayers to me. 

Before heading home, we stopped at a Subway for one of the most tasteless sandwiches I’ve had in a while.

Sitting at the handicap table, I had one of those pausing moments. My grandma sat across from me eating her sandwich, the sun setting behind her and slowly slipping into my eyes. I took a moment to drink in the scene knowing full well, my grandparents are getting older every day. I took a breath for my future self, committing to remember this moment in a sun-soaked Subway, the image of my living grandmother eating a sandwich and talking about life. 

My grandpa didn’t want the day to end. He drove me around Rio Vista neighborhoods and to the dispensary where he teased he’d get me some weed. I wasn’t going to stop him.

Leaving, I gave multiple hugs and kisses to my sweet grandparents, filled to the brim with delight from a day of connection. 

I love the space I’ve made to be filled by the company of the generations ahead of me. It felt significant to bask in an afternoon of sitting in a dark blue Saturn with history at the wheel and legacy in the passenger seat.