My Grandmother’s Eyes

In my early thirties, I saw a photograph of my paternal grandmother for the first time. I recognized the long straight nose that is a trademark in our family, and the dimple in her chin was passed down to my father and one of my sisters. Her dark hair is loosely but neatly pulled back and up off her neck. The only visible part of her clothing is a white lace collar over a high-necked dark dress.

I’ve always loved history. Its framework of facts appeals to my logical side. But when and where something happened doesn’t satisfy me. I want to move on to why and how. Yet I’m still left with a hole in what I want to know. I’m a people person. I need to take the next step, dig deeper, find out about the people involved—what their daily lives were like, how they felt about what was happening around them.

My mother was the keeper of our family history. She told the stories that kept the memories of our ancestors alive. I inherited her curiosity and love of history. When she passed on, I became the keeper. I have the family photographs and have written down my mother’s and father’s childhood memories so they can live on after me.

But there are huge gaps. So much more I want to know.

My grandmother’s name was Johanna. She gave birth to four children and died in 1919 of diphtheria, at the age of 26. Her parents’ names were Paul and Wilhelmina, and she is buried next to them in a small-town cemetery in Minnesota. My father was three when she died. His earliest and only memory of his mother is his father carrying her body out of the house wrapped in a white sheet.

That’s all I know about a woman whose genes I share. Just those few facts. Not much to mark a life. Yet she filled space on this planet for 26 years. She loved, laughed, cried. Her life meant something to her parents, husband, children.

I’m left with questions. What was her favorite childhood pastime? What was her daily life like? Was her marriage to my grandfather a happy one? Did she ever taste ice cream?

Am I anything like her?

I’ll never know the answers to those questions. They are lost in the framework of her history, buried in the facts. Can I get any clues at all?

I looked again at my grandmother’s picture today, and her eyes drew me in. They sparkle through the grainy black-and-white photo. Her full lips turn up at the corners slightly, as though she is watching her children play or thinking of something that brings her joy. Perhaps something that no one else knows yet.

We have a lot of sayings about eyes. The eyes are the windows to the soul. The eyes don’t lie. What do I see in my grandmother’s eyes? Contentment, a quiet joy. That gives me hope that her short life was a full one. Hope that the contentment and joy I carry with me is part of what she passed on to
me.

I feel like I know her better.