The Conundrum of Knowing Others

Lately I've been thinking about the phrase, "You never really know a person,” and I wonder if perhaps what we mean—or should mean—is that we can never really know all the details about a person. Behavior, attitude, personality may make adjustments throughout life, but generally remain very similar. However, how a person behaves, or expresses, her/his personality is something entirely different.

The gist of what I am thinking about is: People surprise us.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Here’s an example of a good surprise: At one point I was talking to my late grandmother, my mother’s mother. She was older, maybe in her late 80s or 90. She told me that she once played around with the guitar. I was astonished…and thrilled. This was something that she had done or tried that I never would have considered for her. So I went back and reviewed all I knew about her—how she managed to raise five kids, keep a roof over their heads, feed and clothe them, make sure that when they needed medical care they got it, and ensure that they never felt as though their lives were at times near destitute. This she did with a husband who would spend a lot of time at the pool hall, and when he needed it, use the food money for something else. And at one point in her life, this amazing woman tinkered at playing the guitar. My mother has the guitar!

“You never really know a person.”

My other grandmother, my father’s mother, spent a lot of time with cigarette smokers. Her parents smoked, her stepparents smoked, her husband smoked, many of her friends smoked. Two of her three children smoked, including my dad. She never smoked. In 1976, at age 62, she passed away suddenly. The house was her domain. In the months after, as my grandfather and aunt were cleaning cupboards and closets, they discovered hidden in a drawer, a pack of Kool cigarettes and an ashtray with two butts in it. Whoa! Grandma smoked!?! They were so surprised that I don’t think they told anyone for several years. I didn’t learn of it, that I can remember, until I was an adult, and only from my stepgrandmother.

What kind of surprise is this?

Baffling initially, and then understandable. For some time my grandmother had some physical discomfort, even pain, from a bad hip. While she was on medication, the discomfort remained. There were also some challenges going on in the family itself. While tobacco cigarettes are not the same as marijuana cigarettes, they still produce a little high, a quick head rush, especially for a non-smoker. This, at least, was my conclusion. Still, I never would have thought of her as having a cigarette. Yet she did. Same person, more details.

I was in college when I learned that my great-grandmother, Leta Eckman, was much married. Surprise! Basically, I never knew her married. Later I learned that her last husband, Richard Eckman, died the day before I was born. When I was child, she was always just Grandma Eckman, my father’s mother’s mother. She was an old lady. She was 69 when I was born. While I knew that she and her son-in-law, my grandfather, were not the best of buddies, I never thought much about it. In those days, when I was with both of them together, it was usually at some family gathering (holiday or birthday). Grandma Eckman would be with my grandmother, mother and aunt, cooking, cleaning up, gossiping, while my grandfather, Dad, uncle and brother (sometimes) would be together watching sports on television, tinkering on some project, playing pool, gossiping. (I am the second son, middle child.) My younger sister and I would bop around between the groupings or off playing together, joined sometimes by our older brother. We visited her at her duplex until 1971 when she moved into a senior residence. She came to our house on occasion. My parents divorced. I became a teenager and drove my sister and me to visit her. I went to college; I visited her when I was home. She wore glasses; she had false teeth. She went to church. She died in 1985. In her later years she talked about her sewing and crafts, her aches and pains, missing my grandmother and the other folks in the residence.

It wasn’t until after she died that my grandfather told me she had been married “seven or eight times.”

Surprise!

Grandma Eckman never gave me an inkling that she had been married, let alone much married.

In retrospect, I didn’t feel like I never really knew her. While I was certainly astonished, I was not dismayed. I was fascinated. I wanted to not only know more, but more details.

And here we are!

People are who they are—wonderful; changeable; full of hopes, dreams and plans; scary; and frequently surprising. That’s why I love them, and I like to keep learning about them.