I'm Geneva's Grandson

Jen Eva Daffern met my grandfather, Charles Hight, when they were students at Keene College in Texas. Grandma “Geneva” was the glue that kept my childhood together. She lived in the house next door to us. At Christmas she could be depended on to get the underwear and T-shirts we would need for the next year. My grandfather Charles died before I was born. Grandma Geneva was married to a man we called “Wilson.”

If there is one word to describe Grandma, it is “worker.” For many years she worked at the LA Times and their billing departments. She was the person who tried to pick up the gaps. She loaned me the first car I drove on a date, a Ford Falcon. She got the seats re-covered for the event! She made sure I had a place to live when I returned to La Sierra College in my junior year.

It’s hard to have a favorite grandmother, but she was the most involved grandmother I had. She helped pay for the tuition at Newbury Park Academy, the boarding high school I attended. I have some of her old furniture in my garage. I looked and couldn’t find a picture of her. I’m going to get one from my sister. She died way too young, at the age of 58, when I was a college junior.

I know she would have loved to be around to see Victor and Valerie born. She would have cheered on my fledgling business ventures, some of which would have probably been more successful with her involvement. I never doubted my grandmother’s love. It’s been many years now since her passing and I haven’t thought about her for a long time. But even now, I sense the memory of her presence in my life and it was good. She left too soon and is dearly missed.I talked to my sister after I made my original post about my grandmother. My sister is the family historian and she filled in some blanks that I had repressed in the recesses of my memorie. When my grandmother was a college student at a Christian college in Texas she was the victim of a rape. My mother was the product of that violent act. She married her rapist, my grandfather, Charles, who I am named after. During their marriage he beat her. After his death she married twice more. Each one of these men was an authoritarian figure who occasionally would “whip” her back into line.

During my mother’s childhood she apparently was unaware of the sexual incest that was happening. However, she couldn’t miss the obvious favoritism that my degenerate grandfather paid toward my mother. For this reason she was jealous of my mother and not very close to her. Until I was born.

At that point my grandmother was back in my mother’s life with a vengeance. In some ways she became a surrogate mother to myself and my siblings as we were often abandoned and neglected by our mother. She made sure I had new underwear every year and she bought me my first suit and my first pair of glasses. She also paid part of my tuition so I could attend a Christian boarding school when I was a teenager. Unfortunately, although she was my biggest fan she was also my mother’s biggest enabler. I loved her very much and would have like it if she could have known her great grandchildren. She would have loved them to pieces.