The hardest button to button

Where to even begin with this...

Last Sunday we stopped by our parents' home post candle party to pop in our heads and say hello to our dear Dad. Sarah was discussing her latest craft project with our Mom, which just happens to be an apron. Our Mom mentioned that she had a collection of our Grandma's (Dad's mom) aprons tucked away in a drawer and offered them up to us. Of course we jumped on them. We not only love all things vintage and kitchen but also everything having to do with our Dad's parents.

Our Dad's parents were two of the most lovable and memorable people in our lives. There is never a day that passes that leaves them forgotten.

As we type this to you dear readers, we are listening to our (and our Grandparents' favorite polka) Roll out the Barrels. It is this very song that brings back some of the best memories of our childhood. Polka dancing in the kitchen with our Grandpa while the holiday cooking was happening in the background, the faint familiar scent of his cigars, our Grandma's steady supply of Bonkers (a candy that she always had on hand for us), Stripes the tiger who resided in their living room closet, waiting all year for Easter bread and finally stuffing the first morsels in our mouths at Easter brunch, "squeeze the knee" and the list goes on and on.

We want to share our Grandparents with you because they were amazing and you should have known them. They would have loved you too. Not only that, but sometimes we worry. We worry that we'll forget their voices or their hugs and we worry that we won't be able to picture their faces. We worry that our younger cousins never had a chance to know them and don't even know what they're missing. We worry because as we sit here typing this, our eyes are welling with tears and we think that if we're still crying about them years and years after they've passed they must have been pretty special.

Holidays with our Grandparents were always a day long event. Their Easter celebration would begin immediately following morning mass. We'd arrive at their home in our Sunday best and be immediately stuffed full of ham and eggs and toast and potatoes and most importantly sweet bread. Brunch was served on the fine china and the adults had small glasses of Rosé. Sweet bread was our Grandparents' secret recipe. Probably passed down from generation to generation, across the Atlantic, into Polish Hill, and eventually into their kitchen. We can assume that Babcia (our Great Grandmother) herself once devoted the long hours necessary to create this precious annual gem, devoting herself to the endless pattern of kneed/rise/kneed/rise/kneed/rise/etc. Needless to say, sweet bread is something to get excited about.

Family and friends and neighbors would drift in and out throughout the morning to nibble on some ham, perhaps crack an egg, and wish our Grandparents' their very best. There was something special about holidays at their house. It was as though they were not only the pillars of our family, but the pillars of their community. This great sense of caring has never left us and has impacted us profoundly.

Their love for their family and each other was obvious. When our Grandma passed away suddenly it was a blow to not only our young lives, but their children, and very much our Grandpa. We were too young to notice the nitty-gritty details of death in all of its complexity, but we knew that something was missing. We knew that there would be no more walks to Grandma's park and that her chair would remain unfilled. We knew that our Grandpa had lost something larger than we could understand. We knew on a somewhat grander scale that we were losing out on something special...that the world was losing out on something special.

Eventually things returned to normal. Our Grandpa took over the holiday hosting and socializing. Grandpa even wound up with a dog named Morgan. Morgan wasn't just a dog, Morgan became Grandpa's best friend and constant companion. They were two peas in a pod, having breakfast together, stopping for ice cream, and playing fetch in the yard. Morgan was a part of our family.

Grandpa was one of the biggest characters that you would ever encounter. He had a sense of humor like no other, a constant optimistic disposition, and a laugh that you would never forget. He knew everyone...EVERYONE. It was impossible to walk through a store without someone approaching him wanting to catch up on life and reminisce about old times. Not only did he have a seemingly endless army of friends and acquaintances, but he was gifted in the art of making you instantly feel as though you had known him for years. He had a type of candidness to him and warmness that was indescribable.

Grandpa died unexpectedly some years back. His funeral was a flood of people who loved and remembered his overwhelming spirit. What struck us was not the amount of friends whose lives he had touched, but the amount of strangers. An older man appeared and told us that he had recognized our Grandpa's name in the obituaries because he would drive a motorcycle and pass out candy to the local children in the holiday parades. Another woman from his neighborhood came and brought a large bone for Morgan, explaining that our Grandpa was a neighborhood figure and she would miss seeing both him and Morgan in her daily travels. After his funeral, it was decided that we would all smoke a cigar in his honor. We puffed until our faces turned green, but it seemed infinitely profound and meaningful.

We've always viewed our Grandparents' love for each other as both unwavering and eternal. When we were cleaning out their house after our Grandpa died we found our Grandma's last cigarette still in her ashtray on a nightstand next to their bed. It was perhaps their love, or at least our impression of it, that leaves us believing that we shouldn't settle for less than the same.