Gustava Gianotti lived an interesting life. She was born on November 17, 1895, four years after Jack. Her family home was shared by younger siblings Rudy (who died in his early twenties of tuberculosis), Lil, and Lydia. She grew quickly, having been, at age twelve, the only attendant to her mother when she gave birth to her youngest sibling, Lydia. Back in those days, most births took place at home, and this one happened in the kitchen! Mothers always hoped for daughters because they would help with the household chores, whereas boys were nothing but trouble! So, the third daughter was a welcome relief to Elizabeth. That healthy infant, Lydia, was born in 1908 and lived until 1997—that’s eighty-nine years!

Gustava, this precocious Finnish gal, was an independent, fun-loving person who attracted Jack’s attention. We don’t know much of the details; no love letters were left behind. When and where they met is lost to the past. Jack must have thought he won a lottery when he convinced her to marry him in 1917! While Gramps held various jobs over his life, Grams was an able partner with him, even riding a motorcycle during his Harley-Davidson dealership period. Her heart, though, was with children. Besides raising two sons (Jack, Jr., and Dick), she was a longtime schoolteacher down where the road ended in the tiny community of Winton. From old class photos on the front steps of the one-room school building, it is obvious she loved those children.

With a certain amount of nonchalance, Grandma told of cross-country skiing three to four miles to school in the dead of winter. I am not sure if that was the first time I ever heard the expression “uphill both ways,” but I never suspected her of lying or distorting the truth. After all, if you can’t trust a schoolteacher, who can you trust? Of course, Gramps also talked about shoveling a tunnel through the snow from the farmhouse front door in the dead of winter. We leave it for the reader to judge.

At home, Grandma usually wore an apron and kept her hair down, cropped to neck length. She was never a hair-bun-on-the-top-of-the-head sort of woman. On canoe trips into the BWCA or Quetico, it was dungarees, flannel shirts, and boots, with hair pulled back in a bandana or tucked under a wide-brimmed adventurer’s hat. Everywhere Grandma went, she took her tablet and pencil to take notes. She loved learning, observing, preserving her thoughts about everything. Notes filled the pages of birds she saw, squirrels, flowers, plants of every sort. Gustava was indeed an amateur biologist and a keen observer of life and enjoyed it all. She died of a heart attack at age eighty-six. But she carried the mischievous twinkle in her eye to the end, having brightened every room she entered.

When I was twenty-three years old, my company had me working on a two-week assignment at an over-the-horizon radar facility in North Dakota. When the task was finished, I drove across that state and into Minnesota, to the farm where Gram and Gramps lived. I was still a new Christian, having committed my life to Christ the year before (1972), and was quite enthusiastic about sharing the way of salvation with others. My dad (Jack, Jr.), who didn’t understand my faith nor my zeal, strongly warned (“forbid” would not be too strong a word here) me not to bring up any religious matters with his parents (my grandparents). Since the Bible teaches us to honor our parents, I felt compelled not to initiate any conversations about spiritual things.

I determined that I would not start any conversations about Jesus, the Bible, or anything spiritual. On the last night of my visit, I sat down at the piano and played a few tunes I knew from memory. After a few moments, Grandma sat down beside me on the piano bench with an old hymnal in hand. And she opened it to different pages, asking with each one, “Do you know this one?” I played, she sang, and Gramps, sitting in his easy-chair reading the newspaper, began to hum along. Tunes like, “I Come to the Garden Alone” and “How Great Thou Art” brought a smile to Grandma’s face.

I noticed in her hymn books was a copy of the most recent Daily Bread devotional booklet! At this point, she was opening up the conversation along spiritual lines. I didn’t start it, but I felt free to respond to her initiative. She began to tell me of her Lutheran background, so I told her of my conversion experience, how I had lived a wayward life in my teen years, but then I confessed my sinfulness and put my trust in Jesus’ death on the cross to save me. At that point, Grandma spoke with a hushed, almost reverent voice, “Do you know what that was?” She paused, not expecting an answer from me, but as a segue into her answering the question herself. I blurted out, “What?” She responded, “That was the Holy Spirit.” My heart leaped for joy; she wasn’t just a religious person who went through the motions of church-going. She was a genuine believer who understood what really mattered.

Yes, I kept my commitment to my father; I did not start the conversation about spiritual things with his parents (my grandparents). Grandma started it! All I did was sit down to play the piano.