The Journey from New Father to Great-Grandfather

My granddaughter handed me her month-old son, my first great-grandchild, smiling as she did so. I had seen a smile like that 70 years earlier when my wife held out to me our first child. It struck me that neither mother spoke as they placed the babies into my arms. 

As young as they were, both seemed to know they were not only entrusting new life to me; they were writing pages in a family history. Muriel was 19 and I was 23 when I held our first child. Now I am a 93-year-old widower holding that history in my arms.

Most of my grandchildren are in their thirties and I've held, fed and diapered them, carried them along streets where we now meet for lunch. They were probably too young when we began training together to run the three-mile races we still enter. We've had time together I will not have with Amari. But his birth has me thinking of beginnings rather than endings. Just holding him creates memories that might one day tell him we touched.

I've suddenly begun behaving in ways that should embarrass me. I find myself hurrying over to young couples holding babies, first in a local supermarket and days later in a restaurant. I called out "I've just become a great-grandfather and held the baby the way you're holding yours!" Instead of recoiling and shielding their children, both couples smiled and congratulated me. The young mother in the restaurant said, "Here, hold her. You'll need the practice."

I've also begun to see something in the young father I was that endures in the great-grandfather I am now. I became a father eighteen months after returning from the Korean War. Most of what you bring back — especially the memories — you discard, or hope to. But something I returned with must have lain dormant in me over the decades.

When our training days ended, I stood with tough, irreverent soldiers who snapped to attention when the trumpeter sounded "Retreat" as the flag we loved was lowered. It's as though at 93 I was hearing that trumpet's call to stand tall as I hold my great-grandson. Instead of slumping to the dirge of an old man's music, I straightened to the blaze of a trumpet I heard on long-ago fields.

I wonder if that call helped make it possible for me to survive the death of my wife. While no longer physically alongside me, Muriel's presence is in my being, my soul. She knew the boy I was and the man she helped him become. She saw that in uncertain times I seemed to reach within myself to find the will and resources to go forward.

She would want me to hear that trumpet's call as I hold Amari and for him to hear a call of his own. My love for Muriel tightens my grip around our great-grandson. I want him to know he's being held by both of us.

When holding Amari, I can't help but wonder about the America in which he is likely to live into the next century. I came of age in post-war America, a benevolent place rich with possibilities. The country was surging with jobs that could lift an ambitious white man from poverty into the middle class. Builders were dropping foundations like seeds into ground that grew lush with affordable housing. 

The America in which I became a man was for me a kind place where caring people were eager to help each other fulfill their dreams.

An act of kindness from someone who saw promise in me helped lift me from poverty. I was on a troop ship returning from Korea when my company commander asked what I planned to do after I was discharged. When I told him I would have to quickly find a job, he suggested instead that I go to college. He wrote about me to Columbia University from which he graduated after serving in World War II. 

Still in uniform, I was invited to an interview with admissions' officers and then to take the SAT. Eight weeks off a troop ship, I was in a Columbia classroom thanks to my captain and the G.I. Bill.

I wonder if Amari will be touched by acts of kindness in a country that seems quicker to criticize than to offer compassion. He will live in a world armed with platforms that give bullies the power to launch electronic barbs at their victims. There's an eagerness to find flaws in those we most admire.

If there was social media 70 years ago, would it have insisted our bugler had somehow avoided going into combat? But my intuition would have reassured me the man whose sound touched our souls had to be one of us.

The world, and our country, have changed during the four generations that encompass Amari and me. As I hold him the sound of that trumpet reassures me that the America that nurtured my dreams is out there waiting to reemerge. I'm certain it will bestow on him the acts of kindness that brightened my path from the boy I was to the great-grandfather I am now.

Amari and his parents live in San Francisco and I live in Florida. Travel has become more stressful for everyone, even more for a 93-year-old. But, I bought a baby carrier and will continue flying across the country knowing someone young and promising awaits me there. The blaze of a trumpet will  stand me tall as I board a plane taking me to my family's future.

Robert W. Goldfarb served as founder and president of Urban Directions, Inc. (UDI), a management consulting firm that mentored managers and management teams to achieve their fullest potential. He closed UDI in 2021 to concentrate on writing and serving as a volunteer mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere. His book, "What's Stopping Me From Getting Ahead" was published by McGraw-Hill. Read More