Onset, July 1963 by Ken Goldstein

In the photograph I'm standing, smiling, and holding my first guitar; a plastic toy instrument I'd received that day, for my second birthday. The setting is the front yard of my grandparents' house in Onset, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Behind me, sitting in lawn chairs, are my Uncle Phil and Grandpa Eddie.

That image of Grandpa Eddie, my father's father, is important to me, because it is proof that sometime, while I was alive, he was still able to move around, to leave the house, and to enjoy his family. Within three years of that day he'd be dead from cancer.

In all my memories of Grandpa Eddie, he's lying on the couch in the circular bay window in the corner of the living room of the Onset house. All traffic flowed by that spot. He could see the front door and had a view of the piano and the pump organ, where some Aunt might be playing a simple tune to which another Uncle would sing suggestive limericks. Through the window he could also see the action outside, on the street, and on the front porch that wrapped around the front and side of the house, as he was wrapped in his blankets.

Although he was ill, in my memories I'm not aware of it. The house is always full of people and more than enough action to make up for his stillness. I move from the kitchen, where Nana Ruth has just taken a fresh batch of toll house cookies from the oven, to the yard, where my father and Uncles are firing up the bar-b-q, to the corner where I show Grandpa Eddie some new toy or a rock found on the beach. To me, at that age, each adult has a station, and I don't find it odd that his station never changes.

All my birthdays down the Cape, like the one in the picture, were shared events, my birthday coinciding with Nana Ruth's and, later, Cousin Robin's. From the other pictures and home movies of that day, I know that my plastic guitar was not the only musical present. Nana Ruth received a new banjo-uke as her gift (a banjo-uke looks like a small banjo, with the stretched canvas top, but is tuned and played like a ukulele).

In the home movies, pre-video and silent, she tunes it up and begins to play and sing. You've never seen such smiles as on the faces of my family in this strip of film. Nana Ruth, obviously very pleased with her gift, Uncles, Aunts, and Cousins singing along, and Grandpa Eddie, enjoying every moment. He died of Cancer in April of 1966, just a few months shy of my fifth birthday.

Years later we came across Grandpa Eddie's Notary Public seal in the attic of the Onset house. I inserted a piece of paper and embossed the seal of "A. EDWARD GOLDSTEIN." I ran my fingers over it and felt the full texture and weight of his name. In my desk drawer I still keep this small scrap of paper, embossed with the name of my dead grandfather; the grandparent I had the least amount of time to get to know.

But in Onset, on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, in July of 1963, I'm only two, I've got a brand new guitar, and all the time in the world.