Burnt Toast

I like eating burnt toast because it reminds me of my great-grandfather.

My brothers and I called him Ya Ya Papa.
I don't burn it on purpose, but whenever I burn toast by mistake, I eat it happily because it makes me think of him-

his fine gray hair combed neatly
his black suit and white shirt that somehow never looked too formal, and is the only clothing I can ever remember him wearing.

His hands.  His old, elegant, delicate hands.
My great grandfather lived to be 94 and spent the last years of his life in my grandmother’s house on Townsend St- we called her Lala, named by my older brother because she never knew the words to the lullabies she sang to him. He would coo back to her “more lala” and she chose to hear it as a name- a term of endearment that would last through the rest of her days.
When we would visit Townsend St. my three brothers and I would climb up on Ya Ya Papa’s lap and kiss his cheek, and he would always give us a crisp dollar bill and pat our hands and share secret observations about each of us in Norwegian to Lala. They would pass smiles about his comments as they’d watch us play with toys stored in Lala’s basement waiting for our visits.

Ya Ya Papa was a night owl, and slept until almost noon each day. When he woke, my grandmother would bring him breakfast. Half a banana, a bowl of oatmeal, a soft boiled egg set in a porcelain egg cup, black coffee, and burnt toast with butter.
And they would chat with a mix of Brooklyn English and Norwegian phrases, and they would smile, and he would eat from the tray set on his lap, and read the paper, turning the pages with his long fingers, that everyone has always said looked a lot like mine. My grandmother always seemed so young when she sat with her daddy, and they didn’t know it, but they were teaching me about choosing love in every moment we shared. Without any big pronouncements, or oversized efforts. Just choosing every day to offer what they had to give to each other, just right, burnt toast and all.