THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 10, 1995 TAG: 9509080095
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
HIS IMPATIENT FINGERS drum the table. His eyes dart to his watch and about the room, but pass lightly over the faces. He says little and shifts noticeably. Twenty minutes have elapsed since he arrived for Saturday morning coffee and cake with the three De Young sisters, and now he, Siebran ``Sam'' Sjoerdsma, my Grandpa, all 94 willful years of him, is ready to go.
Go? Go where? I wonder. On an errand? To another appointment? No. Nothing so sensible. Grandpa is ready to go, just to be going. Back home, perhaps, where yet another round of solitaire and window-gazing await him.
This is to be the pattern of the day, on a weekend set aside for videotaping family history. I have journeyed to the largely Dutch working-class community of Lansing, Ill., outside Chicago, where my not-so-unusual Frisian surname appears on headstones in the cemetery. But everywhere we - my father, the master of ceremonies; my younger sister Britt, the filmmaker; Grandpa and I - are to go, my grandfather will contain himself for no more than 15 minutes before the finger-drumming, the fidgeting and the clock-watching begin.
The three elegant De Young sisters, ``working girls'' who never married and now range in age from 91 to 95, set an inviting table each Saturday for Grandpa, the rare elderly widower. They've known my family for decades, and my sister and I are charmed by their amusing conversation about times past. But Grandpa will not allow us this indulgence, and we reluctantly leave.
It's on next to Great Uncle Ed's house, which he shares with his unmarried daughters Agnes and Eleanor. Considered a ``know-it-all'' by a certain 94-year-old solitaire player, Agnes, now in her 60s, holds forth with family stories and photographs, many of them, touchingly, of herself playing happily as a child; and 95-year-old Uncle Ed, infirm and almost deaf, comes up with the name of the man whose parachute didn't open during that skyjump at the Lansing airport so many years ago. He smiles brightly.
There is so much to glean from this simple human tableau, but soon, predictably, Sam Sjoerdsma starts to fidget. I begin to wonder if he has always been this self-centered and I didn't notice, or if age has made him more demanding.
On the way out, Agnes suggests to Dad that he move Grandpa, who lives independently and still drives, into the Lansing senior citizens' home. (That'll be the day.) Meanwhile, up ahead, Grandpa passes judgment on the older Uncle Ed: ``He did pretty well today.''
Next up - Great Aunt Nettie, 82, who appeases Grandpa with an apple pie that she has just baked. But he fails to notice the glow that company brings to my great aunt's face, a face so reminiscent of my grandmother's. Recently widowed and lonely, Nettie corrals Britt and me in the kitchen, wanting to know all about our lives. She talks about her weak heart and old age, about how much she misses her two dead sisters, and when we leave - the fidgeting postponed a bit - she lingers sadly in the doorway, waving.
By day's end, after seeing all of these dear people and many more, and tolerating Grandpa's restlessness, I am distressed and fidgeting. I wonder what has become of my grandfather, the man who taught me to play gin rummy and let me win; the farmer who showed me how to pick corn and cut asparagus, then put me to work in a chicken packaging plant, sorting eggs for a few dollars and boxes of Jujubees; the gentle friend who called me ``Blondie'' when I still was, tickled my feet and rode with me through the ``Tunnel of Love'' at the fair.
I wonder who this irritable old man is, this old man who lacks the time and the grace to attend to others' lives, who cannot see the love that all these people want to give. My grandfather worked hard, loved one woman his whole life and witnessed a century's history, but he now seems lost, withdrawn.
Then a most extraordinary thing happens. Safe in his own dimly lit living room, seated in his favorite beat-up old chair, wearing his favorite beat-up old sweater, Grandpa comes alive in reminiscence, and I suddenly see that his stubbornness and self-containment have helped him to survive. At 94, perhaps as he has throughout his life, he relies on the comforts of habit and home: The weekend's activities have unsettled him. At last, he is relieved.
Now when I stow away, as I often do, with my own peculiar thoughts, I sometimes think about my Grandpa, also playing solitaire, and I'm glad that he's still there.
He'll make 100. I have no doubt.
MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma is book editor for The Virginian-Pilot.
by CNB