I miss spending birthdays with my grandpa. I was his first grandkid and born on his birthday. I was actually due in late March, but he kept joking to my mom that maybe I would be born late and on his birthday. My mom told him that he better not dare wish that on her. He always said I was the best birthday present he ever received.
He wasn't actually my grandpa, biologically speaking. I didn't know when I was little until my mom accidentally left a short autobiography she wrote for a scrapbook on my bed. It didn't change much. My mom's bio dad was awful, and her stepdad entered her family's life when she was an adult, but she loved him. I quickly decided that he was my real grandpa regardless.
I couldn't pronounce "grandpa" as a little kid. I don't think most toddlers can. So he was "Papa" to me. My grandma was "Grammie". Their names never changed as I got older. They were always Grammie and Papa.
I've essentially cut Grammie out of my life. She was always conservative, but she at least made an effort for us. She used the correct pronouns for my sister when she came out as trans and started calling her her granddaughter immediately. But over time, she started getting more and more radicalized, more and more hostile to us. Any effort she made for us was now an inconvenience forced on her, and only followed when she was corrected. I guess that's what happens when you're growing older and more confused, and your only media intake is Fox News.
This election cycle, she proudly proclaimed her support for Trump, saying over the phone that he'd "save this country". My sister, her trans granddaughter, called her later that day and read Project 2025's stated goals to her line by line, pleading for her to listen to how her voting for him would ruin the lives of so many people, including her own family. She still proudly voted for Trump anyways.
There's an envelope on the kitchen table, addressed from her to me. I know it contains a check for $50. I could use $50, who couldn't? I've been staring at it for a week now, every time I walk past it. I plan on donating it to a local trans org and mailing her the receipt. I don't think I'll pick up the phone when she calls to wish me a happy birthday.
I have her name sandwiched between my first and last on my birth certificate. Maybe I'll use the money to change it.
I don't remember my Papa well. I knew him for 21 years of my life, and spent summers with him. But he was a quiet man. I know he worked as an electrician before retiring. I know he loved watching shows about storage units and lobster fishing and dirty jobs. I know he had a Jeep that he disassembled and reassembled enough times that I'm pretty sure he could do it in his sleep. I know he would buy us sweets when we went on errands, and that on my sixteenth birthday, he bought me a toy truck because I thought it would be funny to say he got me a car for my birthday. I know he had a cane that he was too stubborn to use around the house. I know he died because he stopped taking his heart meds because they made him drowsy, and then his heart stopped two days later, on April 1st.
When I went to his funeral, people shared stories about him. He always had candy in his pockets, they said. He loved this, and he loved that, or he always said something or another. And as I stood there, I cried, not only because I was mourning, but because I was realizing I didn't know the man in the coffin at all. Memories of childhood were all wiped by faulty brain chemistry and the trauma it resulted from. A whole life buried, and the most I had of him was a few scattered memories, a toy truck, and a birthday.
Sometimes I think it's better this way. I have my grandma's name, but I can change that with some paperwork and a fee. I can't change my birthday. Maybe it's better if he can rest as the man I called Papa and not whoever he has the potential to be. I'm afraid to ask too many questions about who he really was, what opinions he held, what he would've thought about my transition and queer relationships and tattoos and hair dye.
Maybe it's better that I can miss him in relative peace.
I miss spending my birthdays with Papa.
