It May Be Worth Something Someday

My grandfather died when I was 16. Not coincidentally, that was the same year my parents and I had our final falling out. He was a decent buffer. My grandmother died almost two years earlier. She was the true mediator in the family. She never took any shit from anybody, so none of us were allowed to get carried away while she was alive. My grandfather inherited the mantle after his wife died, but he could never pretend to be impartial. Everyone knew I was his favorite. He was too good at being a grandfather to ever actually come out and say that I was his favorite grandchild, but we could all tell. And the feeling was mutual. He was always my favorite person. There was a time in my childhood when I wanted my grandparents to adopt me. They never did, unfortunately.

Music was important to my grandfather. Other than a few years in the army, he was a professional musician his entire adult life. He did not come from a family of musicians and often wondered if he had been switched at birth. When he got married and had a son, he wanted to pass on his musical knowledge. That son had no interest in learning to play anything, and took his life into a decidedly different direction from his father. When his son had a son, that son was encouraged to play sports. It looked like my grandfather was destined to be the sole musician in the family.

Then his son had a daughter. I was born to be a dancer. That was simply the way it was. As a dancer, music is exceptionally important to me, particularly rhythm. My grandfather taught me Every Good Boy Does Fine and Good Boys Do Fine Always. I taught myself scales on the piano, using the hunt and peck whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half method. As soon as I was tall enough to reach everything, my grandfather had me on his drum set and taught me everything I know about playing drums. He bought me my first set, which was the only reason my parents tolerated it. I can see where having a child who plays drums might be a little annoying, but they could not forbid it without disrespecting their elder. Fortunately for everyone, my lessons were at my grandfather's house. Fortunately for my grandmother, my grandfather's music room was in the basement.

As a musician, my grandfather never made anything close to Paul McCartney money, though he was hardly in the garage band tax bracket. Money was a taboo subject in my family, but I think I was always aware that my grandparents had more than my parents. I simply saw that as the natural order of things. The older you were, the more money you had. My grandparents lived well. My parents had everything they needed. I had less than everybody.

Not that I grew up in poverty. We always had a roof over our heads, food in the kitchen, two cars in the garage, and plenty of clothes. Everything I ever wanted was an extravagant luxury, according to my parents. Except new clothes. New clothes were welcomed and encouraged. As long as they were respectable. “No daughter of mine is dressing like a cheap whore.” Evidently, an acceptable response is not, “How about an expensive whore?”

My parents were never rich, but they were several neighborhoods away from poor. My father was the pastor of his church, which pays more than it really should. He was also on the board of directors at their evangelical headquarters in Chicago, or whatever the sectarian version is called. Probably church council. Though he only went to Chicago a few times each year, he got paid to be on the board as if it was a real job. He also had an expense account for travel, both out of state and around town. Lutherans do not exactly take a vow of poverty.

For as long as I can remember, I was aware that many people had far less than we did. If I wanted a new toy, I was told about the starving children in Africa who had to play with sticks and rocks. If I wanted to eat something other than what was offered, I was told about the starving children in Africa who had to eat spiders and worms. For the longest time, I had a typically American misconception about Africa, given to me by people who had never set foot on the continent. Many years later, I had a boyfriend from South Africa who never even saw a jungle until he was an adult.

My grandparents grew up during the Great Depression. In the 1920s, my grandmother's family was rich, by any definition. At the beginning of the 1930s, they were homeless. She went from changing clothes for every meal when she was a child to sleeping in the family car when she was a teenager. She knew what it meant to lose everything, and made sure I knew how much I had. Most of my friends' parents probably had higher incomes than mine, but I knew as few rich people as I knew poor people. My childhood was deep in the heart of middle class.

I had to beg and plead with my parents for every little thing, except clothes. I think that might have been more about keeping up appearances than anything else. It was important to my parents, especially my mother, that we all looked like we could afford to live higher on the hog. How I dressed reflected on them, whereas their social circle never knew or cared if I could play Richie Cole's “Shaker Song” solo. I paid for anything music related that was not from my grandfather because my parents thought it was an extravagant hobby, despite the fact that my grandfather was a professional musician most of his life. When people complain about being forced to take piano lessons as a child, I wish my parents had done that. They paid for everything related to all of my brother's sports, when it was obvious that he would never come close to being a professional athlete, but there was never enough money for what I would turn into a career. It is true that my taste in musical instruments leans toward the better equipment. I had a Selmer series III alto sax in high school when there is absolutely nothing wrong with a cheaper Yamaha. But even after I started making money at my “hobby” and my brother was getting cut from one team or another, they could only afford to pay for his extracurricular activities. I left before college, but they were never going to pay for that either. At least for me. They paid every dime of my brother's education.

My brother was unequivocally their favorite child. He was the oldest, their golden boy who followed their rules – as far as they knew – and their only son. He was the only one who could carry on the family name, at least directly. There are probably a million people with our name, but our branch of the tree is not getting any bigger. My grandfather was the only son of his parents and he only had one son, who only had one son. Of course, daughters can carry on the family name in this century, but if I had a child tomorrow, she would have my Chinese name. If not for my grandfather, I would have rejected my English name a long time ago.

I try not to hold any of that against my brother. It is no more his fault that he was our parents' favorite than it is my fault that I was our grandfather's favorite. It was compatibility, personality, and mutual interests.

What I do hold against my brother is that he knew I was in my grandfather's will and never told me.

When my parents died last month, everything they owned was catalogued, assessed, and put under a microscope. No one cares about your thumbtack collection, but lawyers look at property, and the IRS always wants their cut. My parents' house and pretty much everything they did not give to their church went to my brother. Fair enough. I was dead to them, so there was no reason I would be in their will. Had they felt guilty and left me something, I would probably reject it on principle anyway.

An interesting point here is that, in the United States, when most people want to leave an adult child out of their will, they either specifically mention the person by name and indicate that they get nothing, or give the person a single dollar to show that they were not accidentally left out. The purpose is so the child cannot contest the will under the assumption that they were left out by mistake. In some states, but not Minnesota, you can put a clause in your will that someone only gets whatever they get if they do not contest the will.

Instead of doing any of that, my parents showed how big their balls were. Since I was dead to them, they never mentioned me in their will at all. Why would you put a dead person in your will? They either went against their lawyer's advice, or better yet, their lawyer never knew I existed. Legally, this leaves their will wide open for me to contest. I think they either knew I would want nothing to do with them and their stuff, or they genuinely thought of me as dead and I never crossed their minds when writing up the will. Either way, they gambled that I would not take it to court. And they were correct. What is theirs was never meant to be mine. Contesting the will would only hurt my brother, not them. He probably needs it more than I do.

After all the people with suits and clipboards sorted through the cobwebs, something no one was expecting was that my parents owned two houses. Except that they did not. One of those houses was my grandfather's, and he absolutely did not leave it to them. As it turns out, he left it to me. I was a minor when he died, so it went into a trust under my father's control. Naturally, no one told me. After I was dead to my parents, they must not have seen a reason to tell a dead child that her grandfather wanted to take care of her since her parents refused. A few years after I was out of the picture, they tried to sell the house. But it seems that real estate agents have some kind of rule against selling houses for people who do not actually own them. After that, who knows what their plan was. The house was in their will, so they knew it was still there. Leaving it to my brother was not a smart move, especially since he knew it was not theirs to give away. I have no idea what legal consequences he might face. I am told he has cooperated with everyone and never personally did anything illegal. By trying to screw me over, my parents kind of screwed him over, too. His childhood memories of that house are now tarnished by legal bullshit that he never asked to have dumped on him.

When the dust started to settle, I started to realize that I own a house in Minnesota. Obviously, I have to sell it. I like the idea of keeping it, but the property taxes will not go away just because I live elsewhere. And I would need someone to take care of the place. I could rent it out, but finding responsible tenants is difficult, especially from the other side of the world, and I would still be responsible for maintenance. I have great memories of that house. Some of the best moments of my childhood took place in that house. I would hate to supplant those memories with tales of clogged drains and broken pipes. Selling the last thing my grandfather ever did for me might be difficult, but I thought it was sold off years ago. I highly doubt he wanted me to live in it anyway. The only practical reason to give it to me would be so I could make some money off it. He probably assumed that by the time he died, I would be fully supporting myself as a professional dancer, and just like every professional dancer, could use the money. He sure got that right. I was flat broke when he died.

Just for fun, I looked up the address on one of those real estate websites. I don't know how they determine anything, but according to them, the market value of that house gradually increased over the years until it plummeted dramatically in 2018 and then skyrocketed in 2020. I don't know what happened in between those two years. Ordinarily, I would ignore website experts, but the rest of their information about the house is pretty accurate.

The obvious question now is sell or wait. If the price is only going up, it makes sense to see how high it can go. But it will go down eventually. In 2018, it went down hard. I paid nothing for the house, so everything after taxes and fees is profit, but if I sell it in five years for 60% of what I could get today, I will feel like I lost that theoretical money.

The more I think about selling it, the more pissed off I am about what my parents did. When I was 18, I lived in a tiny downtown Minneapolis apartment no bigger than my current bedroom. My grandfather generously wanted to give me his house. He put it in a trust rather than simply name me in his will, mostly to avoid taxes, but also so that no one – presumably my parents – could contest it. My grandfather's mistake was making someone as untrustworthy as my father the trustee. It is far too much house for an 18-year-old, but I could have sold it. According to the internet, I would have gotten far less for it then than I could now, but I needed the money far more then. My grandfather wanted to help me out in a way that would have completely changed my life. Had his wishes been kept, everything would have been different. Then again, would it have been better? Life has worked out pretty well for me so far. It would be too easy to speculate about all of the hypothetical possibilities. If I had sold the house at 18, I doubt any money would be left. If I sell it now, I have retirement savings. Maybe in their animosity, petty selfishness, and general assholery, my parents actually did me an unintentional favor.

But the greatest irony in all this is that my parents wanted to pretend I did not exist, yet through their deaths, I inherited more than they could have ever given me.