“Grandfather’s Car,” New Era, July 2015, 20–21
Grandfather’sCar
Cheryl Easton Okubo lives in Utah, USA.
After Grandfather died, his car sat in the garage for months. So one day I told Grandmother that I’d like to own it!
Illustrations by Greg NewBold
I was shocked! My grandmother wanted me to pay for my own grandfather’s car! Really? That car had been parked, just sitting there in her garage, ever since Grandfather’s funeral several months before. It was unused and old now, so to me it didn’t seem right or fair that it wouldn’t just be given to me, her oldest grandchild. She was my grandmother, after all, and was well provided for financially, so why couldn’t it just be an inheritance or a gift? She didn’t even drive it, so wouldn’t I be doing her a favor taking it off her hands?
Adding insult to injury, my own grandmother decided to call a neighbor of hers—a retired judge—to come over to the house and write up a purchase and loan agreement for me to sign before she would let me buy the car. At first it made me angry—then very sad. I started to believe she didn’t love me, her first grandchild.
There were a few minutes when I thought about leaving in a huff of insulted pride, to never look back or talk with my grandmother again. But luckily I didn’t, for a few very important reasons:
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I needed a car.
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I knew I could trust that car because Grandfather always kept his cars in top condition.
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I could afford it.
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Most of all, I knew Grandmother was insisting upon her method of transferring the car to me for a good reason, even if I didn’t know what it was.
Besides, as I thought about it, I realized she wasn’t the kind of person who would intentionally hurt anyone, much less me. She’d loved me all my life, so why would I think conducting a business deal between us would ruin our relationship? She was probably also thinking that my siblings and cousins could have felt slighted if the car had been an outright gift.
When we came to a mutual understanding, we both signed the document, and the judge signed as a witness. According to an ancient Chinese proverb: “The weakest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory.” Because we signed an agreement we had worked out together, I was able to keep my part of the bargain.
At the end of our meeting, with my copy of our contract in hand, I drove away in what was now my car, deeply assured that my grandmother really did still love me. Although she showed it in a way that at first caused me to doubt, I learned many other things from her that day. Most important to me was that if I wanted something in this life, there would ultimately be some kind of price I would have to pay for it, even things that seem to be offered for free—or that I think should be.
Perhaps the best part was that I was treated like an adult by a grandmother who expected me to be mature enough to understand that it was necessary to handle our transaction the way we did for my sake as much as for hers.