Grapes
by Matthew Yaldezian
December 20, 2021
There were 1500 hundred people at my Grandfather's funeral. He was a farmer. He planted raisins. He'd say to my father, "Son, the best raisins come from good grapes. The rest you can leave behind."
But his affirmation was incomplete. When Grandpa would only come home with a basket of raisins and would ask us to try them. But never the grapes.
One day I asked my father, "Dad, why don't we taste the grapes too?"
He gave me a look I had never seen before and said, "Ask your Grandfather next time you see him."
My Grandfather was a modest man. We were always told his riches were with family and I was the second eldest out of eight grandsons and ten granddaughters.
His other riches came from his Reedly ranch and the estate that went along with it. Rows and rows and miles and miles of raisins.
As kids we'd run and play through the vines and hide behind what we could; raisin trees don't make for good hiding. My cousins, brothers, sisters and I would ask Grandpa to plant peaches and apples and plums and apricots to eat and hide behind instead. But Grandpa would only plant raisins.
"What's wrong with raisins?” he'd playfully snarl as we'd tug on his leg and beg the question. In the midst of this, I'd always throw in a, "Grandpa! Grandpa! Why don't we taste the grapes too?" Which would always generate a swift but playful kick of avoidance.
When I graduated high school, everyone was there. And everybody spoke. Including Grandpa -- who never spoke at anything. He hardly ever drank either. One scotch at a party and maybe two during the holidays but that was it. And always with ice. And always scotch. Nothing else otherwise or in between. One time my dad ordered wine at a restaurant and sent it back because it was no good and Grandpa threw a fit because he presumed my dad didn’t know what he was talking about. But my even the server agreed with my dad and brought a new bottle. "Didn't matter," my dad said recalling the story, "Grandpa ordered a scotch anyway."
At my graduation party, Grandpa made his speech: “Well, you're a man now”. And that was it.
After a round of applause, in an attempt to make us laugh and maybe share a moment, I was buzzed enough to ask Grandpa once again, why we didn't taste the grapes too.
But as my hand laid on his shoulder with my head half twisted, I suddenly realized that even at my own party, this was not the inside joke I had hoped it would be. Upon this realization, Grandpa's finely knit smile, that he had proudly worn throughout the day, suddenly shrank into a pointed glare of affirmation as he said firmly: "We grow raisins."
My dad was in earshot and we both turned to each other; dad’s look said, "I told you so." But my eye-roll still asked, "Why?"
I went to Fresno State as most of us did. But while the rest of my cousins all studied agriculture, accounting and law, I went into communications and wound up on the university radio station because it was the farthest thing from a farm that I could think of. I’d talk sports, politics, movies and music. Just generic mindless chitchat. And I loved it.
Grandpa wasn’t happy about this. He thought it was a waste of time. He didn’t like opinions. Not in person, not at the table, not anywhere. The only time Grandpa would give an opinion is when he was disappointed in someone. And then you’d know exactly what he thought. And he was seemingly proud of everyone except for me.
This created a weird competition amongst the cousins and siblings. We were close as kids and through high school but once college came around we staggered. You think that with all that bloodline and opportunity we’d of teamed up and built something new together, away from the farm. But that didn’t happen. Everyone fell into habits. The girls all got married around twenty-five and cranked out a few kids before thirty. And when the men turned twenty-seven, they all married twenty-five year old women.
My brother, the eldest of us all took over the farm with my dad when grandpa retired, even though retirement for him meant that he didn’t run operations anymore, just managed the farm, growth and quality control. Everyone else became what they had gone to school for.
I wound up at a local radio station in Fresno but got fired for being too “controversial” during an interview with the head of the school board.
I decided to move to San Francisco for a few years after, and then L.A., jumping from local radio to local radio. Scrapping together paychecks and girlfriends here and there but none of it was Grandpa worthy.
He called me a bum at Christmas one year. At the table. In front of everyone. He said my mom spoiled me because she taught me to be a vegetarian. I said, "But vegetarians can still eat raisins." No one laughed and I ate dessert alone that year — outside, with a drink.
Two years later, he got sick. Lung cancer. Never smoked a day in his life. They said it might have been the methane. Or the pesticides. Or the smog. Or all of the above.
I think it was just life. The stress.
He didn't sleep, my Grandpa. He was up at 5am and in bed at midnight. Every day. Even weekends.
And everyday was the same: he woke up, my Grandma would make coffee, he'd have one cup, then some toast, then one scrambled egg, then another cup of coffee, and out the door by seven to check in with his workers, then his office, then the field to taste the raisins.
As kids we’d all spend the night there on the weekends. All eighteen of us sometimes. And in the morning he’d either pluck one of us or a few of us to go with him to the fields and taste the raisins. He knew the power of picking who he picked. We'd all be jealous of the other but he kept it pretty even over the years.
Sometimes we’d all go. He’d pile us into the back of a trailer and lug us along through the fields tasting the raisins with him. And sometimes they'd be bad and he'd spit them out and we'd have to then go back and talk to the workers and talk to the office people all over again.
There’s a few pictures over the years of all of us in the back of the tailer with Grandpa standing next. His arm perched at the edge wearing a big smile. One time I got to sit on the tractor seat and pretend I was driving.
When he got sick, we all went to his house. All of us. It was the first time in years. Maybe a decade. All the aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, great grandkids, other family and friends. And we’d all stay over for the weekend, drinking and telling old stories. Looking through old pictures, arguing over who remembered what more accurately than the other.
One night, all the cousins got drunk off his scotch and ran into the fields to taste the raisins.
Another day, we somehow piled all thirty of his great grandchildren into the old trailer and dragged them out into the fields. But once the week started again, everyone would return to their regular lives.
I was there everyday though. I was between work as usual so I figured I'd make myself useful.
But he didn't like that.
He didn't like, that I, of all people, was the one there everyday nursing him, changing him, helping him die with some dignity.
Weeks went by.
His speech was jumbled, the cancer bleeding into his brain and whatever else was left inside him... but every once and awhile he could muster up a word or two. A sentence. Something. And most of the time it didn't make sense. And if it did, it usually involved the temperature of the room. But after awhile, he just stopped talking. He could hardly breathe. He was alive but living off the oxygen and whatever water he had the strength to sip down a straw.
Then, one day, as things were really winding down, out of the sheer blue, as I was rolling him over for a change, and he started to laugh.
I rolled him back and looked him impetuously like a father would to a child and said, "What's so funny?"
And he just smiled softly, waited, breathed and whispered,
"You're the grapes.”
…
There were 1500 people at his funeral. Two California State Assemblymen, and the mayor of both Fresno and Fowler.
I was a pallbearer, along with my brother and other guy cousins.
My father and his brothers looked on like generals as we walked the casket out of the church and into the hearse.
At the cemetery they played Taps and we put our lapel flowers on the coffin before they lowered it into the ground.
His estate went to my father, my aunt and two uncles.
I suppose it would eventually come to me, on some level, but I wasn't as interested in raisins as my brother and other cousins were.
I preferred grapes.
Matt Yaldezian is an Armenian-American working writer living in Los Angeles.