The steps creak a little more than they used to. Or maybe that’s just me.
Either way, the three of us manage—me in the middle, my grandsons on either side, all of us negotiating for elbow room like it’s a formal treaty. One’s got a juice box, the other’s got a million questions, and I’ve got a knee that now files complaints without warning.
Evening settles in the way it always has in Rhode Island—slow, deliberate, like it’s thinking things over. Somewhere down the street, a screen door slams with authority. A dog offers an opinion nobody asked for. The air smells like cut grass and summer, the same exact formula they’ve been using here for a hundred years.
“Grandfather,” the five-year-old says—he prefers a regal air— “did you have TV when you were a kid?”
I let that hang there for a second.
“Yes,” I say. “But it had three channels and all of them stopped working if someone sneezed too hard.”
They laugh, unsure if I’m kidding. I don’t clarify.
And just like that, something shifts.
Pawtucket. Early 1960s.
Different steps, same kind of evening, only I’m the five-year-old kid this time, sitting next to my grandfather. He didn’t tell jokes exactly, but he had a way of saying things that made you realize later—sometimes much later—that he’d been funny all along.
We’d sit there without a plan, which today would be considered a scheduling error. No phones, no distractions, just the radical concept of being outside and not documenting it.
He’d nod at things. That was his version of commentary.
A car would go by.
He’d nod.
Somebody would walk past.
Another nod.
At the time, I thought he might be evaluating the entire neighborhood one silent judgement at a time. Looking back, I think he was just paying attention in a way most people forget how to do.
“See that?” he’d say occasionally, pointing at something I absolutely did not see.
I’d squint like it was a test.
“Yep,” I’d answer, buying time.
He never called me on it.
Kind man.
Sometimes he’d tell a story, but never the full version. Just enough details to make it interesting and just enough missing to make it confusing. I spent a good part of my childhood trying to piece together what I now suspect were heavily edited accounts of things that were none of my business anyway.
I remember his hands—steady, worn, always resting like they’d earned the right. When he spoke, he didn’t rush it. Words came out like they had been approved in advance.
“Pay attention,” he told me once.
That was it.
No explanation. No follow-up. No instructional pamphlet. Advice, not an admonition.
Just two words and the expectation that I’d figure it out eventually.
“Ya Ya?” The three-year-old says, using his generic title for both grandfather and grandmother, he’s less formal.
I come back to the present, where both boys are now looking at me like I’ve temporarily left the building.
“Yeah?”
“You’re doing that thing again,” his brother says.
“What thing?”
“Just… staring.”
“I’m thinking,” I say.
“That’s what Mom says right before she forgets what she was doing.”
I nod. “Runs in the family.”
They accept that.
I look out at the street, then back at them.
“I used to sit like this with my grandfather,” I tell them. “On steps just like this.”
They shift closer, interest officially activated.
So, I do what he did.
I don’t give them everything.
I point at the sky, tell them to watch how the color changes if you’re patient enough. I tell them to listen—not just for noise, but for what’s underneath it. The rhythm of people winding down, the world easing off the gas.
One of them tries it. The other lasts about six seconds before asking if snacks are involved in this activity.
Progress, not perfection.
And sitting there, between their questions and their fidgeting and their very modern inability to sit still without negotiating terms, I feel it—that quiet thread running backward through time.
From them, to me, to him.
Sitting on steps hasn’t changed much.
The world has.
But this part—the sitting, the noticing, the almost-but-not-quite understanding—that seems to hold.
I glance over, half expecting to see my grandfather beside me, giving one of those small, knowing smiles.
Instead, I’ve got two boys, one asking for a second juice box and the other wanting to know if “paying attention” counts as being good.
I think my grandfather would like that.
I really do. Sometimes I think he is still there, nodding and saying, “this is why you pay attention.”
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