How One Rhode Islander is Making Good on His Promise to Be the Best Grandpa

Photograph courtesy of Paul Kandarian.

Until my mid-twenties when they both passed, I had two wonderful grandfathers, each widowed when I was five or six. Grandpa lived next door to us in Seekonk, Massachusetts, Nonno in nearby East Providence. We’d see them once or twice a week, rarely more. But when we were together, mostly at our house for meals and holidays, they were always loving, kind, decent and generous men. 

I loved them dearly, and still miss them and their wisdom of the aged, which I didn’t appreciate at the time, but what youngster truly does? But as great as they were, my brother and I did nothing with them, really, beyond the meals, the visits, the occasional wedding or funeral as we got older. Maybe it was the times. Maybe being friends wasn’t the norm. Maybe staid but loving paternalism was the rule.

That tradition changed for the best when I became a grandfather — and evolved into best friends with my grandson, Mikey, born in January 2015, who has always been the center of my universe but has developed into my favorite Rhode Island traveling companion. I joke with friends not familiar with Rhode Island that I’m one of the state’s biggest cheerleaders, but it’s true —  I find great joy in showing friends around my favorite state and gush enthusiastically wherever I take them. 

And no greater joy do I derive from touring Little Rhody than with Mikey. We are, as he calls us, “adventure specialists,” heading out into the wilds and urban centers of the state in search of destinations unknown, agendas unplanned, delight found around every corner.

Our usual day is Sunday. I pick him up where he lives in Taunton, Massachusetts, and routinely ask, “Where to, buddy?” so much so that he has started calling me his Uber driver.

“How about that playground in Jamestown?” he asked me on New Year’s Day 2023.

The math and upbringing would dictate a “no,” given I grew up amid the Rhode Island phobia about driving anywhere that takes more than ten minutes. And going to Jamestown means driving to him from my home near the Cape, driving to the playground and back to his home, then mine, all of that taking more than three and a half hours and nearly 150 miles in all.

“Sure thing, buddy,” I laughed, the time and distance and inbred Rhode Island-traveling phobia be damned. “Let’s hit it.”

And hit it we do, every week, going where the wind and our imagination take us. One of his favorites is that playground, as well as others in Providence and another in Newport. We’ll do things like hike the East Bay Bike Path in Riverside or walk by the ocean at Colt State Park in Bristol or traverse Providence’s India Point Park Pedestrian Bridge to watch and feel the thundering travel on Interstate 195.

Sometimes we run ourselves silly around the Children’s Museum in Providence, or drive to Swan Point Cemetery to see the majestic statuary and historic markers and flowering bushes and trees. We’ll take a long drive to the Fantastic Umbrella Factory, feed the chickens, run amok in the bamboo forest, buy some crystals in one of the hippie-style stores there and maybe wander to Second Beach in Newport to watch the waves pound the shore before I bring him home, exhausted.

We plan nothing and see so much, letting our imagination and wanderlust guide us. One of my favorites was stopping at an open house at the Providence Art Club, where Mikey talked up one of the state’s best artists, Anthony D. Tomaselli, who graciously gave Mikey some drawings he’d done, much to my bestie’s delight. He told Anthony he loved to draw, too; hopefully, that short conversation will inspire him to a lifetime of art.

All along the way, I am often blown away by Mikey’s ever-growing wisdom. Once, as I marveled at his amazing thought process, I told him “If you imagine whatever you want to be, you can be it.” Mikey paused, pondered, then postulated positively that “Imagination is reality.”

One recent stretch of that limitless imagination of his is aviation, so I’ve taken him to small airports — Newport — and large, that being T.F. Green International in Warwick. We took in the latter one recent day after an afternoon at Roger Williams Park Zoo, another Mikey fave. We parked atop a garage and had the entire floor to ourselves, running around to watch planes land and take off — which Mikey’s imagination always does.

I leaned in to take photos of him enjoying himself as he stared at the planes, the bustle of activity and quite possibly his future. He casually brushed me aside, saying “Grandpa please, you’re disturbing my aviation peace.” Fair enough my friend, space given, I’ll just stand here loving you from afar.

One thing I learned from my dad, who loved the open road as Mikey and I do, is to ache for what’s around the next corner, to appreciate the uncertainty, to revel in the joy of the unknown. I like to think I’ve instilled that delight of discovery in my grandson, teaching him not to fear the unknown in the simplest way possible — by embracing spontaneity.

“Which way, Mikey my boy?” I asked that New Year’s Day in 2023 as we sat at a four-way intersection in Jamestown after leaving his favorite playground.

“Uh … how about that way?” he said, pointing right.

“I was thinking the same thing,” I laughed, taking the turn toward the late-day sun.

We drove over to Fort Wetherill, where we’d been before, and scrambled over rocks and sand, he scrambling, Grandpa mostly stumbling, with him checking to make sure I was OK all along the way. We soon emerged onto a rocky precipice to drink in the moment, the 4.5-billion-year-old center of our solar system shining its waning light on the smiling center of mine.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it Grandpa?” he said with breathless wonder.

It was. He is. And my life always will be, with him in it.