I am sitting on top of a glass patio table. My legs dangle over the side. In front of me, my grandfather. He is leaning back on a rusty chair, his attention on me. He hands me a book that I had brought from school.
A calm breeze complements the patio scene — a sensation that feels like a blessing during these warm afternoons. The palm trees sway in the gentle wind. My siblings are around us, happily yelling and uncontrollably laughing as they run barefoot on the damp grass. The sound of their play seems to muffle as my grandfather asks me to read him the book.
I am seven years old and I have yet to finish a whole book by myself.
I start reading it. Very brokenly telling its story to him. Every pause I take is made null with his question, “¿Y que paso después?” And what happened next? Not in a rushing manner, but with encouragement. A calming nudge that helps me understand that I still have his attention.
As an adult, I try to calculate how much time he spent listening, nudging. Spent, not wasted. How much time did this man gift me to finish a 48-page children’s book?
My grandfather had always been my companion. Before school had any place in my life, I spent my days in my mother’s office — which happened to be my grandfather’s as well. My mother was an architect at his firm, and while she worked on his projects, he kept me company. A playmate who took me on candy runs, let me (helped me) build forts in every corner of the office, and laid on the ground with me as we laughed at the same movies I made him watch with me, over and over.
“¡Ya está lista la comida!” I hear my mother from the kitchen window, calling us to join them for dinner. My grandfather was a big lover of food. He is the reason why I understand what the word hangry means (and who I inherited that feeling from). So, I would never have imagined the next words come out of his mouth, “Continúa.” I tell him we can go eat, not because I’m hungry but because I cannot understand why a grown man would postpone eating to hear a little girl read a book.
But I keep going. Word by word, struggling sentence after struggling sentence. Until I finally do it, I finish my first book.
The next moment is faded in my memory. I had closed the book and nothing else seemed relevant. Who knows if I even ate afterwards? All I can remember is that moment of pure happiness.
My grandfather passed away nine years later.
The man who had gifted me his time had run out of it.
We glorify those who are no longer with us, and I never hesitate to glorify my grandfather. I was his first grandchild, and it showed. Without meaning to, he passed his essential traits to me. He taught me what love looks like when it’s quiet — when it’s simply being — and I was there to witness it.
As a child, I didn’t understand it. Now, I see how he taught me to appreciate myself. This man chose never to point out my flaws. Never to let out an accidental derogatory comment when something upset him, never to raise his voice, never to throw blame my way.
In all the stories I was privileged enough to read, there were always characters that showed some level of imperfection, but it is a beautiful thing to look back at someone with bias. My grandfather must’ve been human too, filled with flaws, with mistakes. But not to me. To me, his memory remains uncorrupted. My mind paints him as who he was when he was with me, when it was just the two of us. And to me, he was perfect. To me, he has always been the person who sat with me, patiently, until I finished the entire book.
This is a series of essays by Edmontonians reflecting on human connection. Pitch your little love story to [email protected]
This article appears in the April 2026 issue of Edify
