Grand

Where did your name come from?

My name is Andrea J’Neene Team. My grandfather called me Andie. He was the only one who got away with it. We moved when I was nine, and Andie got lost in time.

J’Neene was my mother’s middle name, and the one she went by. I liked the weird phonetic spelling and I passed it down to my daughter. For a while I used it as a last name and signed my art Andrea J’Neene.

I recently decided to resurrect Andie for a few reasons. To honor my grandfather, who I adored as a child and lost touch with when we moved. There were visits, but our relationship changed and sadly was never the same. My identity as Andie fell away.

My grandfather was one of the very best parts of my childhood. He embodied summers at the cottage. The carefree days of freedom and fun. He taught me to ride a motorized mini bike at age six by letting me operate it, then jumping off the back. By seven I was whipping through rows of corn on the little Honda 80. He saw me as capable.

He grew a garden. He taught me how to pick everything in it at peak ripeness. The rest of the year we ate canned vegetables, but at the cottage we shelled peas and shucked corn and ate the most delicious toasted tomato sandwiches with one thick slice of a perfect tomato. If a zucchini grew too large, he sliced it thin and fried the big rounds dipped in egg and then flour.

At home our kitchen was small, my mother prepared meals while we weren’t around, she was a solo cook. My grandfather, however, was fine with me shadowing him. I followed him everywhere. I loved going into town with him. I still love hardware stores. Watching him cook, changed how I saw cooking and influenced the rest of my life. I spent years trying to find those tomatoes again and finally grew my own garden. ( I even got a little famous for my version of his toasted tomato sandwiches).

One birthday he gave me a subscription to National Geographic Magazine. It seemed odd to give a little kid a magazine subscription, but I LOVED it. I couldn’t wait for it to arrive, then poured over its thick photographs for days. I fell in love with everything African and much much later travelled there. That trip changed me.

I grew into an awkward teen, then an adult. My grandfather lived 2000 miles away where my cousins stilled resided. They had changed his name from Grandpa to Papa Frank and still had an active relationship with him. For me, the distance combined with the turbulence of my mothers relationship with her family, caused a rift. I sadly became estranged and lost touch.

I think I also lost touch with that capable little motorcycle riding, carefree kid who my grandpa called Andie.

Andie wasn’t fearless, but she was always curious and willing to try. My grandpa was the first person I felt seen and known by. He jumped off the back of the motorcycle when I wasn’t expecting it because he had ridden with me for weeks before and knew I could do it. He sent me to pick corn and beans tomatoes for supper because he trusted me to pick out the ripest and most ready vegetables. Before I knew I could do something, he knew I could.

So it’s Andie for him, because I may not know if I can do things, but I somehow believe he knows I can. My newest book about Beatrix Butterfly is for my grandpa and for my own grandkids, because there is something magical and wonderful about being a grand.