These are my mother’s parents: Barry and Grace Everett.
I spent all my summers with them growing up. We called them Skipper and Gramma. My grandmother taught me manners and grammar and that reading is a wonderful thing.
My grandfather taught me how to sail and how to clam and that reading is a wonderful thing.
They both taught me that I was Really Worth Their Time.
My grandmother died on June 25, 1995; Skipper died August 11, 1996– ten days after his 87th birthday and eleven days before the birth of his first great-grandson, my son William.
I never knew them when they looked like this, but I like to imagine that this is what they looked like when they got married: she was eighteen, and he was twenty-nine.
No, I never knew them when they looked like this, but I always wondered, nonetheless, why People magazine never featured them for their annual “most beautiful people” issue– even when they had grey hair.
But People magazine only judges people for what they look like.
