Listening in on Girl and Grandpa

I'm totally eavesdropping on the table beside me at Panera this morning. There's a blonde college student with a nose ring and a Texas A and M shirt on. Across from her is an older man, probably in his seventies. He has a hearing aid, but he's comfortable here. He's visited with several other people in the restaurant already and I understand that he's a runner. One of his friends came in and said hi, and sat down at the table with them with his coffee.

I'm really impressed right now, and a little sad in my heart.
I'm impressed that this girl actually traveled up to visit her grandpa, got up before eight o'clock and came to the restaurant with him. She doesn't have her phone out on the table to wait for texts. She doesn't look rushed to go anywhere else. She's here, fully present. Talking to her grandpa and his friend, answering their questions. Asking her own. Listening.
There's talk about the hurricane. Grandpa's got a lot of friends at Panera who stop at their table to say hi and visit. She's visiting with them. So I'm impressed with this girl who's taking her holiday weekend to visit Grandpa and fully engage with him and his friends.

I'm sad because it didn't happen like this for me. Granted, my grandpa wasn't a really social fellow and he preferred the back of a tractor to a coffee shop in the mornings. I know him mostly from what his kids have said about him, from letters he wrote during the war and from his larger-than-life legacy. For whatever reasons, mostly because neither of us were conversationalists whatsoever, I missed the chances I had to talk with Grandpa when he was with us. I missed lots of chances to hear his stories, to work with him, to understand his life. He was busy when I was a little kid. He worked so hard and I preferred to play with my cousins while we were visiting. And I'm really bad at making conversations. When I was an adult, he was still busy working. There were a few times he sat down to visit, but I had a hard time thinking of things to say or ask.

And now he's gone and I'll never be able to ask him what the Kiwanis are or talk about the weather with him. Last time I was with him, we had a few more chances to talk. He showed me the oats and explained how he knew when it was time to harvest. He told some funny stories about boot camp and training before he deployed to Europe. I'll never know all of the stories. I'll never be able to ask.

I worry about us these days. How narcissistic we are and how easily distracted by our phones we can be. I'm not that old, but I can see society taking a dive as we all just sink further and further into our own worlds. We're losing the art of conversations. We're seeing less and less congregations around coffee house tables in the morning. But today I'm seeing this hopeful scene beside me, a girl with three old guys, one of them her grandpa. Visiting. Engaged. No phones to interrupt.
We might have adapted and become more intelligent as a race of people. We might be self-aware and self-sufficient. But we're also self-absorbed. We need our grandparents to teach us relationships. So, Girl with Grandpa, carry on. I wish you many more years with your grandpa. And I hope you have all of the chances to know him that you need, and I hope you learn from him how to have lifelong friends like his.