“Hi, Papa”

We were visiting my mom, sitting in the big common area of her memory-care residence. A boy, maybe four or five, waved at me from across the room: “Hi, Papa.”

Say what? It turns out that he was the grandson of one of the nurses. And though he hadn’t mistaken me for his grandfather, he saw me as a grandfather type. Is it that obvious? It may be.

What that boy didn’t know is that Papa is indeed my official grandfatherly name, a young granddaughter’s approximation of grandpa. (“I named you,” she recently said.) In our fambly it’s pronounced with the same stress on each syllable: pa pa.

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