I have vague memories of my grandparents. Any of them. For the most part, all but my Grandma Culbertson died before my 6th birthday. What's intriguing to me is how ginormous they still are in my memories 40 years later.
Birthday's in Lake Leelanau sitting at the dining room table with my Grandfather Schrems: "If you don't eat the ice cream first, your cake will get soggy. But then again, if you eat the cake first, your ice cream will melt!" An impossible dilemma at any age - let along four or five! I still have fuzzy photographs in my head of a gigantic bald man with glasses smiling at us while issuing the dilemma. Waiting to see how we would solve the puzzle.
Each of my grandparents were giants in my life for one reason or the other.
Grandma and Grandpa Schrems because we saw them infrequently, they smoked cigarettes (which at a young age I knew was very, very bad!), had this very cool curved couch, a bathroom stall in their basement AND a stuffed-animal turtle big enough that we could ride it like a horse! They became more gigantic after they died in a fire somewhere between my 5th and 6th birthday when my brother, sister and I would spend what seemed like days trying to entertain ourselves in law libraries of some Saginaw law firm while my parents worked through whatever they were working through.
Grandma and Grandpa Culbertson were giants as well. Grandpa was a fireman with an awesome fire hat in his basement in Covington, Kentucky that we would argue over who got to wear next. He also did wood working - one of the few hobbies I recall my father getting excited about doing and/or talking about as I grew from childhood to adulthood. As a fireman, he was larger than life. As a grandpa, awe inspiring with his wood shop in the basement of their home and his mammoth persona. This man ran into danger while others ran out! He too died somewhere between my 5th and 6th birthdays after chopping wood in the backyard days after being released from the hospital after recovering from a heart attack.
I bring up these giants not to bum people out - primarily my siblings and relatives - but because I now view the giants around me from my daughters perspective.
Her teachers, school principals and latch-key care givers have been giants in her life for as long as she has memory. "Chatty Grandma," as Grandma AmRhein is known in our house. And cousin Griffin - because if your parents won't / can't get a big brother for her, Griff is the most awesomest big brother a girl could have in the whole wide world. Her Uncle Pete who swung her like the pendulum of a clock until she grew too big, but will still give giant bear hugs and snuggle in with her. Her BFF Samantha, and Sam's mom Christy, who have become like a second family to her. Stepping back, these are the types of giants I would have chosen for her. (As if I had a choice. Which, by the way, I don't!) They found their way into her life in spite of anything I might have done.
My daughter is pretty amazing. She makes exceptional choices in her friendships, activities and how she engages with others she likes, and those she likes not-so-much. She has an aura that draws others to her like a moth to a flame. Her Giants enter and exit her life as if directed by some sort of script - just the right person at just the right time. They seem to need her as much as she needs them.
I know that I am a better parent at forty-something than I would have been in my twenties when the world revolved around me. But then, if I take a step back, Katrina is as important to me as one of the Giants in my life as I hope to be in hers when she looks back decades from now and thinks of who influenced her life in the most important of ways.
Here is to hoping, and knowing, that anyone I consider a friend is a Giant in someones life at some point.
Peace.
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