Are People The Same?

An investigation

You ever see a photo and think about how there’s a whole world inside of it? That’s how I feel about this picture:

I call this “The Staircase” cir. 1945

Here’s what we know: the man in the center, with his face pressed against the adoring woman, is my grandfather, Bud. The woman behind him, in pearls, is his sister-in-law, Pat. The photo was most likely taken after my grandfather returned home from the Second World War. The guy looking directly at the camera is probably Christian or Catholic. The man in the front also served in the military. Bud is smoking a cigarette and is wearing a ring on his left hand that may or may not be a wedding band. Bud is wearing cool socks. The woman looking into Bud’s squinting eyes is not my grandmother. 

Over the past few weeks I’ve become obsessed with this photo. I’ve asked everyone in my immediate family about it, and showed it to many friends. My aunt, Bud’s daughter, speculated that the gal he’s canoodling might be a friend, the spouse of the man in the front, even. My friends, who also became deeply invested in the mystery of this picture, disagreed with the platonic theory. My friend Tom put it this way: “Whatever’s going on between your grandpa and that lady is…more intimate than sex.”

Tom has a point. This is steamy.

This is my father’s father, who I called Papa. In profile, we’re quite similar. Beaked nose, big smile. I wonder if he’s truly happy here. Does he love the woman whose face he is pressing against? If so, what kind of love is it? The kind that rushes in for several months, then leaves? The kind that burns low in your stomach for years? Do ways of loving get passed down through generations? What I’m asking is: Are we the same? 

Papa will not go on to marry the unnamed woman in the photo, or share a life with her. He will meet my grandmother, Shirlyn, and they will buy a house with stairs leading to the backyard for their children and their friends to sit on. He will have a life after this night. The woman will, too. 

Shirlyn and Bud (Grandma and Papa)

Papa and his family

****

Papa was a child of the Great Depression. He worked very hard all his life and when he retired he became slightly melancholy and anxious. He loved us, he loved his family, but I think some part of him was unsettled. He was generous and social and charming and kind. He was a little sad, too. 

Papa in his teens

Papa grew up in Hollywood, just miles from where I live now. His father, Emile, my great-grandfather, lost everything in the crash of ‘29, and later left his family and started a new one. A ballet master, composer and producer, Emile wanted Papa to take an interest in what he cared about: music and art and…fencing, apparently. But Papa didn’t like any of those things. He was a jock. After the war, he’d play basketball semi-professionally and work on Angel Island decommissioning war ships. 

In his later life and until his death, my great-grandfather, Emile, lived in an apartment in West Hollywood. It still stands. It’s now situated a couple of blocks away from The Pleasure Chest, a sex shop, which would make all of my grandfathers roll over in their graves, and makes me chuckle with amusement.

I got the address from his obituary and walked by it last week. A sort of deep and crawling feeling came over me. Not bad, just strange. An old streetlamp sat outside the driveway. A jacaranda tree was shedding its purple. I almost thought about knocking on the door of the apartment, but thought: And tell them, what? That my great-grandfather who was allegedly kind of a jerk used to live here? That he might still be haunting the place? That the jury’s still out on what kind of man he was, how he treated people? 

Papa (L), his father, and his brother, Bill

****

Papa visited us in Seattle over Super Bowl Sunday one year, when I was about eight. I’d made a number of “homemade lotions” by mixing moisturizers together. I asked him to test them and let me know which smells he liked best. He was in the middle of watching the game, and sat for a minute, torn. On one side, something he wanted to do. On the other, someone he loved. It probably seemed familiar. 

Are people the same? 

I called my Dad to ask him about the picture. He looked at it and laughed. “My father was a handsome devil,” he said. I asked him who he thought the woman might be, and suddenly, he realized he still had the bracelet Papa was wearing in the photo. He found it in a box of old things and sent me this. Inscribed on the back was a message:

“Love, Jan.”

Jan.

Papa was engaged to a woman before my grandma, but little is know about her. My Aunt Katie said she heard Jan was Jewish and her parents didn’t approve of Papa, a mild Protestant, at best. We don’t have her last name or any other identifying details, so it’s hard to say.

And then there’s the ring. If they were only engaged, would he be wearing a band? There’s a possibility it’s more innocuous; a class ring or something. That’s what my mom thought. She said it looks a little big for a wedding ring. Also, Papa was probably the type to wear jewelry. What with the bracelet, and all.

Spotlight on THE RING

According to my Dad, Papa didn’t talk much about past loves or his past, period. Dad would ask him to tell stories, but Papa wasn’t that type. My Dad was, and is, a questioner, a nerd, a kind and sensitive soul. He would play sports like Papa did, but he would also be artistic. He liked to build rockets and was in school plays and was good at drawing, still is. Papa never really understood Dad. And Dad wanted so much to really, deeply know his father in a way he never could. 

Are people the same? Over millennia, culture changes, technology emerges, the world around us becomes more complex—easier and harder all at once. But are people more or less the way they’ve always been? Do they want the same things, even as what they’ve been told to want moves like an ever-dangling carrot? 

My Dad, Scott, around 3rd grade

****

The night of the Super Bowl, when forced to choose between watching the game and smelling my bootleg lotions, Papa got up from the couch and stuck his aquiline nose into every single one of those homemade concoctions. He rated them all so highly, it was hard to choose which was best. The Super Bowl ended and he wasn’t watching. We were still together. 

Papa and Me, 1994

****

People are the same. Thoughts and feelings move through us like waves. The water heats up, the world is different. But we are oceans of competing desires for all of time. 

People are the same. They go to parties and sit on stairs. Since there have been stairs, people have been sitting on them. Have you not seen this painting? 

“School of Athens” by Raphael

People are the same. They want fulfillment. They want to feel as if they did good work and others noticed. People are trying so hard all the time, and the smallest gesture of kindness or recognition can keep them from totally unraveling. 

People are the same. They crave parents that will cherish them and protect them and also let them go. People are the same in that they are fearful and always forgetting they are loved.

People are the same. They smash their faces into women they’ll never marry. They wear cross necklaces and defy God. They do not want to be chained. They want to be understood. 

Papa as a boy, with his dog

People are the same, and they can choose to be better. It’s amazing how many and how few choices we are given each day. For every inevitability, there is a possibility. For every ingrained action, there is a lush, green pause. 

****

At the very end of my grandfather’s life, he was soft. The meat of him was like boiled crab, tender and sweet. It was as if he melted into the next phase of existence, much like one melts into a woman they adore. Surrender. Nothing more intimate than love and death. 

Two years before Papa passed, we went to Hawaii as a family. He would pay for everyone’s accommodations, and take immense pride in this. We would all go to the beach and out to dinner. He would talk to me about tennis, a sport we both played.

We took this photo on that trip, and I distinctly remember how happy he was that night, on the steps outside the restaurant, surrounded by all his grandchildren:

Papa died in the month of April, gently, like a petal falling from a rose. My Dad, who makes a point to answer all my questions, tell all the stories, said it was beautiful. 

People are the same. We are all the same.

Come, sit on the stairs with us for eternity.