Safeguard

Seven thousand miles away and more than a year after both of them have been in the ground, I found my grandparents in a tiny first floor bathroom in Davao City.  My dad’s parents- they lived what seemed like so far away.  But I never lacked grandparenting.  My brother and I were the only two kids on our part of the block, so there were also people that age around; older folks whose children moved out, just ready to spoil us.  My mom’s mom lived right down the road, too, so maybe I did get spoiled.  I didn’t realize how special cross-generation relationship are, I didn’t really think about any of it.  And now, these people (our family’s friends and makeshift guardians) are starting to die.  My grandparents just got in early.

So I wasn’t thinking about them yesterday when I took the new bar of soap from the bathroom sink.  When I  went back to my computer to write on in my endless parade of words, they hadn’t crossed my mind.  But then when I covered my mouth to stifle a yawn, there they were.  I breathed in a different time from my hands, a different first floor, a world away.  In my grandparents’ bathroom they had a flowery wash on the sink, but the air always smelled of something else- presumably the soap in the shower.  

I got up from my desk and went back down the hall to the bathroom.  I looked at the box.  Turns out, Gram and Pap used Safeguard.  

Now I’m here and they’re both dead, but this still smells the very same.  It smells like the one time we slept over night at their house in Braddock and I’d forgotten my toothbrush.  It smells like when they moved to North Versailles, like the shed in the back where Pap promised us a sleep out.  Like the tree we climbed that was covered with Daddy Longlegs, like the picnic table I painted in the driveway, like the hands that poured the soda and embraced my father.  My dad, a full grown man with kids of his own, but my grandpa never failed to kiss and hug him goodbye.  It smells like when they finally came to my last recital, like when I learned Braddock was never really far away.  Like the time I was stuck at college and I knew what was coming.  Like a tube in her throat and needles in her arms.  Like when my Dad said, “Don’t bother coming home” and I didn’t but I should have.  Like drinking in New York City- Rolling Rock, the beer for when you fail.

So I learned something about my grandparents, God rest their souls.  We all took turns letting each other down, but now they’re dead and yet here they are- in my bathroom.  And still, I have nothing, got nothing at all.  By the time I’d grown, I’d forgotten what to say.  That sort of runs in the family.