Lines of Wisdom

I jumped up onto Grandpa’s chair and leaned in to the back of it. I call it Grandpa’s chair because if you were to look at the seat cush­ion, I’m pos­i­tive it would have borne the imprint of my Grandpa’s behind. It could have iden­ti­fied him bet­ter than any fin­ger­print. Each of my grand­par­ents had their appointed chair that they called their own. As I jumped into grandpa’s, my knees leaned into the back of the chair and I rested my elbows on the head­rest. My chin com­fort­ably laid in the palms of my hands as I watched my grandma get­ting ready to walk out the door. My grandma and I were best buds. You could find me at a very young age loung­ing on her couch, cof­fee in hand, watch­ing our daily soap operas together. Of course, mother couldn’t know that we drank cof­fee or watched soap operas. Those were our lit­tle secrets!

As Grandma made her way closer to the door, she stopped by Grandpa’s chair to say good­bye and give me a kiss. I took her face and held it in my hands. I stared intently at her beau­ti­ful face, with my eyes graz­ing over every inch of it, my young child­hood mind pro­ceeded to inno­cently say, “Grandma, what are all those lines all over your face?” I could tell by the reac­tions of every­one in the room that I had said some­thing hurt­ful. But, Grandma, being the woman of strength and beauty that I remem­ber her to be, smiled at me and most likely said some­thing along the lines of, “My dear, those are all my lines of wisdom.”

I had no idea what wis­dom was at the time. And after Grandma left, I was noti­fied that those were in fact wrin­kles and you never talk about them. But today, I have come to admire the “lines” on people’s faces. I hope to be a woman who embraces the “lines” that will inevitably be my fate. They are lines that rep­re­sent all of the years of expe­ri­ence, all of the dif­fi­cul­ties endured, and all of the wis­dom acquired.

Below are a cou­ple pic­tures of Vitaliy’s mater­nal grand­fa­ther that we took on a recent trip to Sacra­mento (a.k.a. Lit­tle Ukraine). He wears his wrin­kles well.

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