Piles

This is how I learned my grandparents' marriage was arranged:

I snuck into my grandfather's office with my brother, knocking over the stacks of paper piled around the room, peering under the table that held his old typewriter. We were looking for a love letter that my grandpa wrote to my grandma during World War II. I don't know what we were thinking. My grandpa is a pack rat, and there was hardly any walking space in his office. The whole floor was covered with stacks and stacks of paperwork and folders. We were knocking things over and haphazardly replacing them, not paying attention to whether we were putting them back on the same stack we'd knocked them off from.

My grandpa caught us and he was furious. He said we'd messed up his whole system of organization.

Later, my mom asked me what I'd been thinking, going in there and snooping around. I told her my best friend's grandmother had a box full of love letters from her grandpa written during World War II, and I wanted to find the letters my grandpa had written to my grandma.

That's when my mom told me their marriage had been arranged before my grandpa enlisted, that perhaps there were no love letters.

She didn't say that my grandparents didn't love each other, but that was what hung in the silence: They didn't choose each other, that's for sure.