By Natasha Steer
@natasha.steer

I wander out of my room. I’m eight years old, my mother is out, and the dark is darker than usual. 

My Grandad is watching TV in his favorite armchair—the one the color of burnt marmalade. When I tell him I’m afraid, he lets me have a bowl of plain potato chips, gets me a blanket, and tucks me into the nearby couch. I know I’ll be able to sleep now.   

Grandad is my second parent. My mother and I lived with him for the first five years of my life. When she bought a house and we moved out, she still worked nearby and I still went to school there, so we frequented my Grandad’s house daily for the next five years, and then weekly when I began grade five and changed schools.

In other words, my Grandad is my home. He is my heart. 

Throughout my childhood, I felt clearly that my Grandad loved me, but it’s always been a quiet love—nothing extravagant or over the top. His love expressed in something as simple as not sending me back to bed when I’m afraid of the dark. 

***

I’m sitting at the kitchen table by myself. My mother and Grandad are in the living room watching Coronation Street. I hate the chicken and push it around my plate—the large white one with the rose in the center. I know my meal must be finished before I join them. 

I throw the food in the garbage and head to the living room. 

***

My Grandad is reading in the bathroom again. I can tell, because that’s when he takes the longest. I pace the hall, linger in his bedroom, call out to him, anxiously wait for him to emerge. When he does, I slip my hand in his and skip down the hall beside him. 

***

I’m playing with my Grandad’s figurines. They are not toys—I’ve been reminded—but they are cute animals. I make the porcelain dog and donkey talk to one another, give a kiss, and share a hug. 

Whoops. The hug was a little too forceful. Panic spreads through my body as I stare in horror down at the small black and green ear in my hand—certainly not attached to the little donkey’s head, where it belongs. 

I put the figurine back and hide the ear behind it, so they are together. Maybe no one will notice. 

***

They found the chicken bones I threw in the garbage. 

I’m at the table again with another plate of chicken in front of me. My Grandad, a proper Englishman, is someone I’m loathe to disappoint. I know I’ll get in trouble if they see chicken in the garbage again, but I can’t make myself eat any more. Peeling each piece off the bone, I blanch at the sight of red. Cooked chicken shouldn’t look like this. 

Three days later, I’m walking past my Grandad in the hall. He’s working on the disconnected toilet with my uncle. My Grandad raises his eyebrows, and I see the subtlest of sparkles flash behind the stern look he gives me. “Somebody put chicken bones down the toilet,” he says.

I keep walking. He knows. 

***

We walk into the grocery store. “Cover your eyes,” my Grandad tells me. I close my eyes obediently, and he takes my hand to lead me through the aisles. We stop, and goosebumps raise excitedly on the hairs of my forearms. “Okay—open them!” He removes his hand and I open my eyes with a flutter in my chest. 

We’re standing in the ice cream aisle. I get to choose the flavor. 

***

I’m 16, and it’s my first big vacation. My Grandad has taken me to England. 

I stare down at him from a hot air balloon, tethered to a place on the beach. We’re in Bournemouth, the place where my Grandad and Nanny had their honeymoon long ago. I watch him, watching me, so far away. He waves, then lifts his camera to his face, aiming it in my direction.

My nervousness lifts. As long as he’s there, I know I’m okay.

***

Part of me comes alive only with my Grandad. I love that version of me. 

The one who rubs St. Ives cream tenderly, slowly, on my Grandad’s feet. The one who massages his legs long and hard, not slowing, weeks after he has come down with Guillain Barre, and we are trying to return all feeling to his limbs. The one who doesn’t roll my eyes or impatiently respond, who swallows her tongue and follows him into the computer room to try to change a setting on the computer that’s not quite right, feeling an insignificant fraction of the frustration that anyone else would bring forward. Feeling more often a swell of love that I can help, instead.   

He makes me a different person. A softer person. A more loving person. 

***

I’m a mother now, and my son is eight. It’s the night before the two of us fly to live in Wuhan, China. Our luggage is packed; we’ll leave directly from my Grandad’s house in the morning. I feel sure I’m ready when my Grandad notices my luggage tags are not filled out. 

I watch him work  at the dining room table as he carefully cuts the paper to the right size. He is bent over the tags—neatly inscribing my future address on them, one after the other. I think back to when I’d shared the job offer with him, dreading his disapproval, unsure if I could leave without it, and worried about leaving him for longer than I ever had. 

“Well, if that’s where the work is, you need to go, don’t you?” he’d said.

I don’t know yet that I will spend the next four years living away from him. I watch my Grandad while he sits writing at the dining room table. I feel my throat close at the thought of saying goodbye.  

***

I’m snipping off the dead roses to make room for new ones. It’s my Grandad’s favorite time of year. 

As I dig the holes where his begonias will be planted, I look up at him. 93 years old, tending his rose garden with the same love and care he’s always shown.  

I am a whirlwind, always moving, always doing. 

He calms me down. He forces me to be present. 

*** 

 I step into my Grandad’s garage and pause, tipping my head back slightly as I close my eyes and inhale. It smells like home, familiar and reassuring—like my childhood is always accessible to me if I can only access this place for the rest of my life. It smells like bike rides and lawn mowers and watching my Grandad paint the picnic table and benches. My chest tightens. 

“What’re you doing?” My Grandad has caught me standing here. 

“Smelling.”

“What’s it smell of?”

“You can’t smell that? Maybe wood? Like all of this,” I wave my hand in the general direction of the garage, full of his tools and odds and ends. “It’s smelled like this my whole life.”

My gaze wanders further back. I see him in my mind's eye as he bosses me about—perhaps the only person who can do so—telling me to tip the lawn mower, get the rake, pass him his gardening gloves. Put the leaves in the bin. 

“Maybe it’s gasoline,” my Grandad dryly replies. I flash him a smile.

***

My Grandad reaches for his tea and takes a sip. It’s after 7 pm, so we’re watching Coronation Street. I reach for my second rock cake, still warm. 

When the commercials come on, we see a glimpse of the news to come: warnings about the pandemic, an ongoing occupation in our capital, a war. I notice the burgundy button-up Marks & Spencers sweater my son gifted our Grandad last Christmas. It hangs on the nearby blue dining room chair, at the ready if my Grandad decides to swap out his favorite worn brown wool sweater, though he rarely does. 

My gaze catches on the green and black figurines sitting on the wall unit, a faint crack between the ear and the head of a donkey. Toilets can be fixed, broken ears glued back on. Nothing is ever truly broken. We mend, we patch, we glue. We learn. We grow. We are resilient.

My eyes drift back to my Grandad. His eyes are closed. He’s waiting out the commercials, or he’s taking a snooze. He’s still teaching me how to be patient and calm—though I know enough to wake him when Corrie comes back on. 

His chest rises and falls rhythmically in the familiar, comfortable wool sweater he loves best. It’s well-worn and wraps around him in a cozy fit, keeping him warm and safe.

It’s a feeling I know well. 

Guest essay written by Natasha Steer. Natasha is a racialized intersectional feminist, single-lone mother since the age of 19, and social justice educator. Connect with her on her website.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.