Grandmothers, gifts and thoughts on the I-5

By Sasha Paulsen

NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — My daughter and I spent most of the Thanksgiving weekend on the I-5 driving down to see my son, Sam, and his wife, Jenny, in Los Angeles and then driving back north, along with, it seemed, most of the population of California.

Author Sasha Paulsen recently learned she is going to be the grandmother of a boy — Phil Allen Photo

But the inordinate amount of time we spent stopped in massive jam-ups and looking at the scenery of, well, not very much — the Anderson Pea Soup windmill in Santa Nella is the highlight of that drive — was entirely worth it for two reasons: First, we went out for ramen on Sawtelle Boulevard, not far from where Sam and Jenny live. Second, I learned I am going to be a grandmother.

The ramen is our own holiday tradition, started some years back when Sam was a med student. One Christmas Day he had eight hours off between rotations, so Ariel and I dashed down with his presents. He left the hospital at 8 a.m., slept for four hours and was waiting when we arrived. We went to have ramen on Sawtelle, one of the best, most-fun Christmas dinners I can remember. Then he went back to the hospital.

The grandmother element, however, is entirely new for me.

Sam and Jenny met as med students at UCLA. They got engaged on Thanksgiving 2019 and were thinking of a wedding in June 2021. Then 2020 interrupted everyone’s plans for everything. By December of that year, no one knew when anyone would be able to have a wedding, and, as Jenny put it, “We thought this could be one good thing that happened this year.” They got an appointment with a judge at the San Francisco courthouse to be married from their LA apartment via a Microsoft Teams meeting with guests attending on Zoom.

I got to be the witness, which involved my having to figure out how to show the judge my ID on my computer and discovering I did not know where the camera was. The judge thought this was hilarious but still would not simply let Sam vouch for me that I was who I said I was, his mom. Eventually I found the right place to hold up my driver’s license and the wedding went on, as only a wedding during COVID-19 could. They didn’t have wedding rings; the jewelry stores were closed. They couldn’t go on a honeymoon; they couldn’t even go out to dinner, but they did order takeout.

“I think we saved a lot of money,” Sam said.

When the world opened up again, they spent it going to France.

Jenny is wonderful, smart, funny and kind. Although she is a psychiatrist, she has not once suggested to Sam that his family might be eccentric, beginning with Sam’s astrophysicist father, who once, while trying to adjust a telescope in Antarctica, put the wrench in his mouth so he could use both hands. It froze to his cheek, and they had to thaw out his head to get the wrench free. Then there is Sam’s Welsh-speaking sister, who is making plans to teach her nephew this extraordinary language — her dog learned it — and I suppose I have to include his technology-challenged mother, who writes novels and occasionally reports news.

Sam and Jenny are tracking this amazing event with scientific zeal. When they first viewed their baby on an ultrasound Sam said he was the size of a jelly bean, but by now he — a confirmed boy —is the size of an iPhone. Even as I marvel at the courage it takes to bring a new life into our somewhat disordered world, I have to admit that Jelly Bean will be one lucky baby to have such parents.

On that long drive home on the 5, as there was not much else to do, I began thinking about grandmothers. My own were as different as two women could be. My father’s mother lived in Sioux City, Iowa, so I only saw her a few times in my life. I remember a gracious, quiet lady with snow-white hair. But — this fascinated me —she also had a tiny red heart tattooed on her arm. Whose grandmother, born late in the 19th century, has a tattoo?

At 19 she left her home in Thisted, a town in the far north of Denmark, boarded a ship in Copenhagen and traveled alone across the Atlantic to New York, where her brother was waiting for her. Much later I learned that the trip and the tattoo were related. She had been engaged to a boy; they each got a red heart tattoo, and then he died. She left Denmark and never returned.

My mother’s mother was a short, wild red-head from Tucson. The story I remember best about her was that once, for reasons unknown, she put a cow in the family house to scare her sister. When I knew her, her hair had turned black, although she still never grew to be anywhere near 5 feet tall. Who was she and where had her family come from? I don’t know. No one talked about this, except she said that she and her sister were called “the little French girls.” She married my grandfather, who had to scamper out of Mexico in 1910, and they went on to California.

So I did not, as many accomplished chefs I have known, learn to cook from my grandmothers. When my Danish grandmother visited Napa, it must have been at Christmas because she bought us snowballs, ice cream rolled in coconut with frosting leaves and berries. My other grandmother, so far as I knew, could only cook one thing, a weird tongue salad that she produced whenever she was called upon to cook, and we were glad this was not often.

I cannot help but wonder what Jelly Bean will remember about his grandmother — yikes, that is me — many years from now, but I hope he, in turn, will wonder what bits and pieces of stardust from grandmothers were passed on to him.

So this holiday season is under way. Back in Napa, Ariel and I went to see Napa High’s hilarious production of “Elf” and then spent an enchanted evening at Bel Canto’s winter show, “The World at Christmas.” This weekend we went to Napa High’s choir performance. Ariel is an alum, and their own long-standing tradition is they all gather with the current students to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus” at the end of the show.

On Saturday, I went over to write a story about Operation With Love From Home and found the Crosswalk Church hall packed with people of all ages filling boxes to send men and women in the military who won’t be home for Christmas. Although it sometimes seems like we are living in dark times, I am also sure that people are infinitely capable of generating light.

And I can’t wait to hear the next report on Jelly Bean: Will he be the size of a ketchup bottle — or maybe a half-bottle of wine?

Sasha Paulsen is a Napa Valley-based novelist and journalist.