I do not know if there is one thing so untouched by time as one’s eyes. If they are brown, those same chocolate eyes look out on the world as our peachy baby skin gets rough and grows bumps, then gives way to wrinkles, our face finally crumbling to nothing. If they are ice blue like midwestern lakes, well, that is my grandmother’s story to tell.

And she has. There is no greater pleasure than learning what those eyes have seen. From eyes that have seen from Superior, Wisconsin to a condo in Novato, California, I have begun to know my grandmother.

1951. Wednesday. 16-year-old Jan Nelson nestles her nose into her scarf as she trudges through the pitch black streets where the city never installed street lights. Breaking through the crisp October air, she passes rowdy bars and dark alleyways and swings her violin case. It’s been a long day, and the homework on her back still needs to be finished.

“That’s just what I did,” she tells me. Of course my grandmother did anything and everything under the sun. But life did not escape her. During senior year, she found someone to love (like all Nelson women) and he brought her out of the entertainment devoid black hole that often engulfs over-achievers.

It’s Saturday. 9 p.m. A dolled up Jan opens the door on her boyfriend, Ron, accepting a platter of home baked cookies and blushing as he calls her beautiful. She glows and loves the blonde locks she cut off into a bob and her blue eyes that can’t seem to break away from his.

For the rest of the evening, “everything was beautiful and nothing hurt” as he sat with her family in their living room and played cards and laughed late into the night.

She lived my dream in high school. My grandmother fell so in love with a boy that, to this day, she regrets leaving him behind for a degree at UC Berkeley. She fell in love with someone who was good to her and made high school enjoyable, not just a whir of essays and exams. Everyday that I work towards this big “something” that is lingering in my future if I stay buried in my studies, I long to be called beautiful, to saturate my heart with love that makes my head go dizzy.

I can’t believe it. Sitting across the granite table top is not just an old lady who lives by herself, but someone who took buses to orchestra practice and walked home and still got straight A’s. Those eyes saw the grimy interiors of industrial Wisconsin buses and dark, dank streets in the biting midwestern winter. She gazed into Ron’s eyes who couldn’t stop looking at hers. There was a time when fresh, young skin framed those piercing blue eyes that always seem to say “I love you” in the way only grandmothers can achieve. A love that persists throughout prolonged terms of absence and glazes over disagreements with ease. I imagine she loved Ron that deeply.
We have recently learned that Ron passed away. All the love that she stored all these years is slowly seeping out of her, along with the hope she held for their reunion. It is for this reason she does not share the details of their parting. Despite my journalistic instinct to relentlessly dig for the truth, I let it slide. I can always try later, and tonight there is so much more to learn.

The beach. 1956. A handsome dark-haired man tries and fails to retain the attentions of a gorgeous 21-year-old Jan. In a final attempt, he throws her shoe in the water. A bold move, but not ridiculous for the confident Henry Whitescarver from a well-off family in Virginia.

Months later, he appears in her sorority house with the shoe. Astounded but irritated by his arrogance, Jan attempts to shrug him off, but his luster overwhelms her sorority sisters. They push and they prod her, until finally she goes out with him. A year later, three months after graduation, they are married.

I stifle a gasp. How did my mother and grandmother both end up marrying someone after only a year and both get divorced? I can answer that: they married someone they only knew for a year. I make yet another mental note never to let that happen to me. Divorce tears apart families and destroys lives: a dark hole from which one never truly emerges.

Curiously, most of this story comes from my mother. She is more than willing to delve into details of my grandparents’ relationship, while my grandmother omits the story entirely and denies it when my mother brings it up. I imagine it’s much easier to relive mistakes if they are not your own.

After graduating college, my grandmother tells me, she settled for a job selling kitchen appliances.

“Why?” I ask, and she snaps back to the present, to her and her granddaughter playing cards on a cool summer evening. I, too, have forgotten about the game; the cards now lay sprawled across the table, having fallen from my hand while I tried to unpack the secrets in my grandmother’s eyes as the stories fell from her lips.

“Why didn’t you take a job you deserved?” I continued, attempting to withhold judgement.

“Well, honey, I don’t know.” She furrows her brow, puzzled at her own choice. “I guess it was my brother that really influenced me to do that.”

How did someone so dedicated end up compromising so much? The 50s were not a good time for women. I wish more than anything she could have been young now. My grandmother deserves so much more than what society gave her.

But curiously, my mother let men control her, too, despite her confidence, willpower and society’s advancement. Perhaps that is the Nelson woman’s downfall: she is too quick to trust, too willing to hand over the reigns to someone who appears more powerful and intelligent. We love too deeply. I can’t end up like that; I won’t. But it seems like I am on that path. I forgave the boy who cheated on me, never stood up when my friends flung around elitist comments. Can we ever change our fate?

It’s 2 p.m. Tuesday. 1974. Jan hustles to her car out of big office building where she arranges files and meetings for the ever-important Vice President of Sales. She reaches her tomato red VW bug, then speeds off to get home before her kids, eagerly anticipating the best part of her day. When they arrive from school, her cheeks glow and her eyes light up behind her wing-tipped glasses as the two people she loves most walk through the door, smile, and say, “Hi Mom.”

Flashing back to the times I had sleepovers at my grandmother’s house, I remember the story of the sauna. During her youth, my grandmother and her friends would sit in a traditional Finnish sauna by the river, until the heat became unbearable. At this point, they wrapped themselves in enormous fig leaves- covering their whole body- and ran down to jump into the ice-cold river. The boys at her highschool, of course, found out and showed up one day with a camera. When I acted appalled, she told me, “I actually remember posing for them [in the leaves].”

I often find myself with that same sense of serendipity she once had. Every summer in Colorado I gather the courage to plunge into an ice cold lake, many times removing my bathing suit. How did someone so carefree end up so laden with responsibility and repetition? Am I destined for the same fate? Above all, I fear monotony, and a job without challenges. I want kids one day, but right now I can’t even think of wanting to throw away my dreams to take care of them.

When I heard that story at the ripe age of eight or nine, I couldn’t understand why she didn’t wear a bathing suit. Now, I know that skinny dipping is far more exciting and enjoyable. I wonder if I will understand these other aspects of her life as mine continues.

“What about after your job as a secretary?” I prompt.

“Well, that’s about it. The rest you know.”

And just like that, we are in the present. How can one’s life be summarized in 20 minutes? There must be more. I want to ask, probe further into those eyes that hold infinite secrets, but it is clear my grandmother is done. She closes herself off with shrugs, picks up her hand of cards. With reluctance, I rearrange mine, wishing for more answers. What was Ron like? Why did she marry my grandfather? What about his alcoholism and their subsequent divorce?

But I cannot know everything. No one wants to show their whole hand of cards, even grandmothers. We need to hold on to something, otherwise we don’t really own anything. Our life is no longer ours. There must always be moments, decisions, emotions, that we can pull out and read under the covers.