On the Trail
By Gloria Glasser
Abe’s Smile: A Love Story

I see him still in my mind’s eye: a bit rumpled from a two-hour subway ride, wisps of thin brown hair sticking out from his head, a broad glowing smile softening the look of timidity and pensiveness that usually marked his features.

He is dressed modestly, often in shirtsleeves even on the coolest of days, wearing trousers that were neat but frayed about the cuffs, their color dulled by many washings and pressings into an indistinguishable blue-black.

Like his son–my dad–my Grandpa Abe had strong arms and a strong stride. Age had reduced the briskness in his, but it was still a lively pace for a man of advanced years. When public transportation fell short of his destination, he uncomplainingly hoofed it the rest of the way.

Born in Baltimore, Abraham Barney Glasser had served as an infantryman in the Spanish-American War, but much of his history is unknown to me; he was a humble, quiet man and I only had the privilege of his acquaintance for the first six years of my life. Which is a shame, because in general I hail from a small, unpleasant tribe of neurotics, sourpusses and narcissists whom I’d never associate with if the circumstances of family ties hadn’t thrown us together.

But that is not to say Abe was the best of a bad lot. No, no, he was simply the best: an old man with a pure heart, sweet smile, simple dignity and kind soul. Those hours he’d travel on the New York City subways – two hours each way – were so he could spend about 30 minutes visiting with me, one of his only two grandchildren.

He’d pick me up at school and walk me the two blocks home, or visit with me if I’d gotten home before he arrived. His wife, Julie, suffered from what would today probably be diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease, and Abe was her sole caretaker. They shared a Spartan existence in a top-floor apartment in a six-story walk-up that Julie rarely ventured from. Their neighborhood in the Bronx section of New York City was called "the Grand Concourse" though the area was devoid of any suggestions of grandeur.

Abe felt guilty leaving her alone for very long. Julie was a sad/mad lost soul, grieving for another son she had lost long ago. She seemed an embittered harpy to me, and I was afraid to be in the same room alone with her.

But I could not get enough of Abe. He was so unlike my father, who was moody and had a hair-trigger temper of volcanic proportions. When you are little you don’t have the capacity to grasp how two such different men could be related, but there they were–father and son, night and day, one sweetness and light, the other brooding and furious. Even now I’m not sure I get it, how the influence of one failed to improve the other’s demeanor, or vice-versa, how the influence of one failed to corrupt the other’s outlook.

Saddled with a mad wife and troubled son, Abe remained genial, calm, a peacemaker always. How a man who seemed so gentle and uncomplicated (in a small child’s perception) withstood such stress in his life I can’t begin to imagine. As with all sainted beings, Abe lived for others: caring for his wife, avoiding conflict with his son, bringing joy to a lonely child by giving her the only 30 minutes he could spare of his long, tiring day.

Even when he fell ill and had to spend his last days at a V.A. hospital, Abe remained cheerful. He knew I had a terror of hospitals so he’d meet us in the cozy lobby, a plaid flannel robe over his hospital gown, dragging his wheeled IV drip with him as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.

When he left us, he had no earthly possessions to speak of, to pass on like an old watch or family heirloom silver or china. In a file somewhere inside a closet in my mother’s bedroom are these two relics: Abe’s "Certificate of Recognition as a Veteran" card, signed in his finest hand, and his Army discharge papers, where one "W.S. Scott, Captain 1st Cavalry," describes the young man’s service as "excellent, honest and faithful."

I was too young to remember a single conversation we had, or even the sound of his voice. But these many years later I can see Abe’s smile, radiant behind a veneer of subway grit. He is waving to me as he smiles, and I wave back as I race up our street to rush into his outstretched arms.

He was no more than a stranger, really, someone I knew so vaguely and so briefly. Yet I will remember him with tenderness and affection always, but especially, on Valentine’s Day––a day that prods us to reflect on the durability and resonance of lasting love, the kind that sustains us through all our days.