Carine Hajjar, a former NR intern and now the Joseph Rago Memorial Fellow at the Wall Street Journal, has a beautiful essay about her grandpa, her “Jiddoo,” that is worth your time.

Carine writes:

My grandfather drinks one cup of black Folgers coffee every morning. No cream, no milk, no sugar. He brews it himself. Beware the fate of having a Starbucks or Dunkin’ cup in hand around Jack Hajjar, for he will surely make a comment. His grandchildren routinely hide their coffee-shop purchases in the car before running inside to visit.

“Those three bucks add up,” he always says, often calculating the annual waste of a daily Dunkin’ run. How I’d hate to tell him that I spent $7 on a fancy Manhattan brew the other day. To those toting cups of retail java, he often suggests ditching the daily purchase and investing the equivalent in the stock market.

You can read the full piece here.

Just lovely. As one likewise blessed to have grown up with loving, interested grandparents, I reckon there’s naught better than time in their presence — wisdom gained and stories absorbed. Plus, there are often cookies and ice cream.