The man I called “Grandpa” was in fact, not my blood grandpa.
My grandmother on my mom’s side divorced her first husband and later married her second, Henry Stanczyk. I only met my “real” grandfather on my mom’s side once when I was around seven years old. My dad’s father left when he was just a boy, disappearing until he turned up in a sanitarium in Inglewood, CA in the mid-1970s. By then he had alcohol-related dementia and didn’t recognize our dad and certainly not my brother and me. So, for me, Grandpa Henry was my only “grandpa.”
I didn’t know much about his early childhood except for the fact he escaped Poland as the Nazis were Blitzkrieging their way through Europe. Every now and then when he had a few beers, he might let a little bit of that experience slip, seeing a neighbor dying in the streets or maybe having to scrape food out of garbage cans. Somehow, he made it to the East Coast of the U.S. and settled near Buffalo, NY. How he met my grandma, I’ll never know. When I was three, my dad flew to Buffalo and drove my grandparents across the country to California where they eventually settled in Tustin, about five miles from where we lived.
Because both of my parents worked, my brother and I spent quite a bit of time with our grandparents. While my grandma was quietly loving and nurturing, grandpa was the outdoors type, always working on something. He had a home-made workshop that was stuffed top to bottom with every type of tool or gadget you could imagine. We later deduced he was probably a hoarder but hanging out with grandpa in his workshop was always exciting.
Even though he spoke with a thick Polish accent, he learned and always conversed in English. Except of course when he argued with my grandma or refered to my brother and I as dupa jaś (which I later found out could mean either silly or a “dumb ass.”) Grandpa was a proud American. He put a heavy flagpole in his front yard and flew the American flag on it. Whenever the National Anthem was played, he was very quick to stand still with his hand over his heart and made sure we did the same. He drove down to the local utility, the City of Tustin regularly bugging them to hire him. Eventually they did. Going out in public with him was always an adventure. Often he would go into the women’s section of a department store with my grandma and find the largest pair of women’s underwear he could find and then hold it up and call her name as he stretched them out. Once, as we passed a picket line going into a grocery store, he took the leaflet he was handed by a striking employee and pantomimed wiping his ass with it. He played soccer in Poland, and later in Buffalo, but by the time I got to know him, he was in love with American sports. Baseball was his favorite, but he also loved football, basketball, and especially professional wrestling.
As I grew older, we shared even better memories. Whenever possible, he would come to my high school football games. Once, he wandered onto the sideline and told me the reason I was being flagged so much for unnecessary roughness on the offensive line is that I needed to I keep my fists lower and hit the defensive linemen in the solor plexus so the refs wouldn’t see. On the next series, I did, and that lineman dropped like a stone. I loved going with him to see the then California Angels play baseball.More than once I had to hold him back from getting into fights with the opposing team’s fans in the stands. In 1991, we went to Wrestlemania together which I know was on his “Bucket List.”
By 1992 though, dementia began to set in. Right about the time Barb and I got stationed in Guam, his condition worsened, my grandma couldn’t take care of him, and my mom had to put him in assisted living (which my mom ruefully still refers to as the “rest home”) where he passed away in 1995. I saw both of my grandparents for the last time in 1994 when I had to come through California on military travel. I took my grandma to the “rest home” so we could visit him. Even though he looked haggard, disheveled, and old, I could see that sparkle in his eyes and for just a moment, I think he recognized me because he asked “where’s Barbara?” He loved Barb (my wife) because she was one of the few people who would give him shit right back when he jokingly started in on her.
Grandpa endured a challenging change, but unlike most people, he ran full speed into it and embraced it. And yes, leaving a war-torn country for a safe and peaceful one might be a positive one, but imagine going someplace where few speak your language, and you have no family to lean on?
When it comes to change, you have three choices: You can fight it, run from it, or, like my grandpa, you can embrace it.
Change is like an incoming wave. Fighting it or running from it only means you’ll be drinking salt water and eating sand. If you’re smart, you’ll swim to the wave, turn, and bodysurf it into the shore. If you do it right, you won’t even get your hair wet.
How will you handle your next big change?
