The Consent Form My Grandfather Signed

Before I Learned Not to Expect Them

To understand why my hand shook a little dialing that number, you would need to understand the house I grew up in, a big colonial on a cul de sac in a newer part of the Peoria suburbs with a lawn my father had cut in stripes every Saturday by a landscaping crew he supervised more than worked.

My parents, Tricia and Jim, built Kessler Realty Group from a single rented office above a dry cleaner into three locations and, that spring, ground broken on a fourth. They were proud of that, and I understood the pride, because I watched what it cost them to build it. I just did not understand, for a long time, that it was costing me something too.

I played piano from the time I was six until I was fourteen, recitals every spring in the fellowship hall of Grace Community, folding chairs set up in rows for families. I have a specific memory, so specific it almost embarrasses me to say out loud, of counting the empty chairs in my row while I played, because counting them was easier than looking at them.

My parents arrived late to most of those recitals, when they arrived at all, carrying gift boxes from the good stores in the mall that always seemed a size too expensive for the occasion, as if a bigger box could stand in for the ninety minutes they had missed. “Business comes first, Jackie,” my father used to say, not unkindly, the way you would state a fact about the weather. My mother said it differently but meant the same thing: “We’re building something for your future too, you know.”

The person who was always in that row, every single recital, was my grandfather Russ. He would come straight off the farm outside Toulon in his good shirt, the collar a little stiff from being ironed by a man who was clearly out of practice ironing, carrying a small bouquet from the flower cooler at the IGA because that was what fit in a farmer’s budget and it never once looked small to me. He wore a faded green cap with a little enamel pin on it from his years driving a grain truck for the co-op, and he clapped louder than anyone in that fellowship hall, every time, whether I hit every note or not.