My paternal grandparents lived out of state and spoke very very limited English, so on our yearly visits, I didn’t converse with them at all. Still, my grandma would make me special foods and have me sit on the ottoman near her chair and she would brush my hair. She gave me a tiny china dog that I still have, 40 years later, and she and grandpa died when I was 13.
My maternal grandfather died when my mom was 9 but her mother lived in our tiny hometown. She almost never spoke to me in either English or Spanish and when I was in high school, I was writing a paper on our family tree and I asked her what grandfather had done for a living. She slapped me.
It was surprising. She said not to ask her any questions. I never did again. She died when I was 37.
Unfortunately all my grandparents lived far away – my father’s parents in Ontario, my mother’s in California – so I didn’t spend enough time around them.
One thing that comes to mind was not about my grandparents but my great-grandparents. I always knew that my mother’s mother’s father was Korean and his wife was Bohemian, but one day it finally struck me how unusual a pairing that must have been in turn-of-the-century Chicago.
As for my grandparents themselves, I never bothered to come out to them - dad’s parents had already died, and mom’s parents, again, lived far away so there didn’t seem to be much point. Anyway, by and by I asked my mom one day if she had ever told them I was gay. “Of course,” she said.
“And how did they react?” I wanted to know.
My mom sort of looked at me and said, “Matt, your grandpa was an actor and your grandma was a ballet dancer. How do you think they reacted?”
Lakai, not to derail the thread but you seem to have had an interesting life yourself. Care to expand as to the background?
You want my background? I came into the US from the Soviet Union when I was three. I never had to experience the same hardship my parents and grandparents went through. After that it plays out like any normal middle class life. I’m 23 now.
I found out my maternal grandmother at a very young age (like grade school) was taken to the hospital where it was found she had a cyst or something on her ovary. My great grandmother said “take it out” which must’ve translated to the Dr as “take it ALL out” so she was left with no reproductive system. Many years later whe was married and either due to denial or extreme naivete telling great grandmother “I don’t understand, we’ve been trying for ages to conceive and don’t seem to be able to.” To which my great grandmother replied: “That’s because you have no uterus.” Hey, thanks for the heads-up!
They ended up adopting my mom, who was their only child. I asked mom once why they never adopted more. She paused a minute, then said “I asked my dad once why they never adopted more kids and he said ‘your mom wanted two and I said we’d adopt one first and if that worked out ok we’d get another.’” 
my grandfather on my moms side was a calm quiet family man, had the house on the lake, fished, sat around the house, did typical old people stuff. had a nice pension and all that. he always had a bad stomach though, couldnt eat alot. said he had to have a bit of it removed because of a serious ulcer. even told my mom and her sisters that when they were kids. when he finally passed away we found his military records and mom did a bit of research.
Apparently the truth of the matter was his stomach was missing a good sized chunk because it had left him not from a scalpel, but from a piece of the ship he served on (that he always said he saw no action on)that was hit by a torpedo and the machine shop he worked in got destroyed. Then after being patched up just enough to return to service his ship was well on its way to run support for d-day.
Thats always blown my mind. just an old guy who liked to fish and taught me how to play chess.
They surprised the hell out of me when I found out today that I’m going to inherit way more money from them than I thought, some day (although I didn’t find this out through them, but through my father.) Although honestly it won’t be much of a consolation, since they’re fun as hell to have around.
The compulsive stockpiling and hoarding gene goes far back in my family. Not the kind of shit where sometimes you’ll see a house full of trash and junk to the rafters, on the news or something - more like, their basement is essentially a gigantic warehouse filled with 60 years worth of neatly-organized, completely random objects. I guess that includes money too. They live pretty modestly, at home anyway (they like to go out gambling and to restaurants) - but they’ve been sitting on quite the nest egg all these years.