'my grandfather hated to go up there our place in metaine was always so cheerful my father said that grandfather would come home crying when deirdre was three years old , grandfather made them get their first christmas tree in all those years he took a package of ornaments up there for it he bought the lights at katz and bestoff and put them on himself it 's so hard to imagine people living in that sort of gloom i wish i had really known my grandfather he was born in that house think of it and his father , julien , had been born before the civil war ' cortland , by this point in time , had become the image of his father , julien pictures of him even as late as the mid-1950s show him as a tall , slender man with black hair , and gray only at the temples his heavily lined face was remarkably like that of his father , except for the fact that his eyes were much larger , reminiscent of stella 's eyes , though he had juhen 's agreeable expression , and frequently cheerful smile .