With Grandad’s recent passing, I wanted to write down some memories of Grandad and Baba—Lee and Barbara Stander, my grandparents on my mother’s side.
Grandad and Baba balanced each other in an easy, memorable way. Grandad was reserved and quiet, with a dry sense of humor that landed at just the right moment. Baba was more talkative and direct about what she noticed in the world. I sometimes joked they were “stuck in the ’50s,” and I don’t mean that unkindly. I never heard them curse, and their fashion sense reminded me of replayed episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Grandad in a button-down shirt and dress pants, western boots, and a big belt buckle; Baba in colorful blouses, makeup just so, and jewelry she’d show us as we nodded along politely.
Their Southern California house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, two stories and always tidy. In the front room, a painting of a rider on a Pegasus hung on a sunless wall yet looked strangely faded, a detail that stuck with me. At Christmas they set up a silver artificial tree dressed in icicles and garland, and that room filled with holiday visits and cardboard-brick forts. A second family room held matching blue recliners and, often, Johnny Carson or Jay Leno on the TV. Their Cadillac was a big, wavy boat of a car with Arctic-cold air conditioning; Baba would look back to ask if I was getting enough air while I shivered and said I was fine.
Outside, the back patio felt like a set from a play—Baba’s carefully arranged oasis of artificial plants and a blue plastic “pond.” The yard had a pool with a diving board, and the property attracted animals of all kinds. Baba fed stray cats and then, inevitably, skunks. Inside, there were Siamese cats lounging around like they owned the place. Upstairs were the bedrooms and a long balcony. Grandad’s work life showed up in the garage, where product samples stacked up. After the Navy, and after a career in retail management, he became a salesman who brought novelties to stores—Koosh balls and all sorts of odds and ends. What I remember more than the items was his pride in doing things right and presenting them well.
A few years after, my mom, my brothers, and I moved to Northern California. Grandad and Baba moved north too – to Shingletown. Mark and his wife, Joy, came as well with their kids—Kristina, Ashley, and Joshua. Grandad and Baba downsized into a single-wide mobile home on the same property, and Baba quickly found new strays, skunks included, to care for. Shingletown was also the home of their rubber-stamp business, Personalized for You (PFY). As a teenager I worked in the shed with Grandad, cutting hardwood blocks to his exact standard: clean edges, no burn marks, no splintering, then careful sanding. They vulcanized the rubber from molds, mounted it on a cushioning layer, and glued it to the blocks, finishing with a color image on the back. Their insistence on quality stood out in a crowded market and, to me, became part of how I understood them.
Later, when my mom, my brothers, and I moved into the same neighborhood, we could walk over for chess with Grandad and conversations with Baba. Grandad built a carport where we set up a ping-pong table, and family games went long into the evening. Baba would often make everyone lunch – usually ham sandwiches stacked high and warmed in the microwave. Next door, we would have family poker nights with fake money and freshly invented poker rules as each of us took a turn at being the dealer and calling our own games. Sometimes, we would have “Monte Cristo Night” – featuring sandwiches made to uncle Mark’s exacting standards and presentation. These were very good times.
When I left to go to college in Chico, those Shingletown memories froze in time for me – something that I am fortunate to keep and remember as long as I live. I did spend some time in Shingletown during my college years, and after I met Laurie, she also had the opportunity to get to know Grandad and Baba.
Baba passed away a while back now, and Grandad just passed recently. Before he died, he spent some time living in Colorado, and we were able to share a few more afternoons and a few more chess games. In the last few months of his life, we got to hear a lot about his life when he was younger and reminisce about shared experiences. He was born in the 1930s, remembered World War II as a child, and served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. He spent time in medical school but chose another path after his service. He married Barbara—Baba to us—and they raised Lori and Mark. They lived long, full lives, traveled widely, and loved their family deeply. I’m grateful they were such a big part of my life growing up.