12 Comments

This story really resonates with me. My paternal grandmother was my best friend, the person who taught me so much about life. But my Mum saw her in a different light, making it hard to comprehend how anyone could perceive the same person so differently. Growing up with these conflicting perspectives was sometimes perplexing and frustrating. However, it also taught me the importance of appreciating different viewpoints and respecting the individuality of relationships. Thank you for sharing Michael!

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Thank you for sharing this Michael. I can resonate with the connection I shared with my grandmother as well. The descriptions of Grandma Vivian's home, the forest outside with tall pine-like trees, the recollection of the pool table upstairs, the library filled with thick books, and the forbidden exploration of the books about sex. These are relatable moments and innocence woven into our childhood for many of us and it resonates deep.

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Thank you Winston!!

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Oh my goodness Michael! I really liked this. I'm inspired to follow your lead and write about my grandparents. My paternal grandfather sits on my ancestor shrine. I didn't know him well while he was living but I feel I'm getting to "know" him now through the ancestor practices I've been guided to. He was a stern and intimidating man who did well financially. Much of what I'm unhooking from in my life right now are the ways I've been shaped by the old bootstraps narrative that drove him. While he attained financial success it came at a cost.

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Also: It was so nice meeting you and chatting with you in SF. I just subscribed (sorry it took me so long) and recommended your stack :)

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Yes! Feels good to have community in this space. I'm thinking of it as slow social media akin to slow food and slow money. There's something about that that's feeling really good from a values perspective.

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Thank you so much for reading!! I'm glad you related. I really relate to your response, lol. No, I really do. My grandfather became a wealthy CEO of several major corporations. But he was not a good father to my dad, and he ultimately pushed my father to a serious suicide attempt at age 27, because my dad couldn't stand the pressure of conventional success (in the way my grandpa saw it). So, yes, you're totally right! Older generations. My dad did better but still had some of his father in him. I am less so but it's still in there.

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This feels so very true. The atmosphere, the memories - tactile and aromatic, (a sense so peculiar that even over decades the memory elicits the smell in your brain). It brings so many things into play that resonates no doubt with readers besides me (who as a grandmother myself flew back to my grandmother’s brownstone in Brooklyn and the smell of a drawer in her kitchen filled with candle stubs and the odds and ends of a house once filled with my uncles and mother as children..

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Glad you enjoyed it. Yes: Such vivid memories; sensory overload!

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I remember very little about my paternal grandfather. I was 5 or 6 when he died, and all I remember of him alive was a wrinkled mushroom of a man sitting in an armchair sliding towards senility. My maternal granddad was ALMOST the polar opposite - journalist, reporter, columnist, painter, overseas at least ONCE.

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Cool!!

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Dec 12Edited
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Well said!! It is an interesting juxtaposition.

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