The Grandmother
The grandmother in "Sestina" busies herself taking care of the grandchild—reading to them from the almanac, making tea, and slicing bread. However, this business disguises an underlying sadness, represented through the grandmother's tears. She seems to be working to protect the child, engaging in these domestic acts both as a means of creating a stable, safe environment for the child and as a means of distracting herself. Even as the grandmother is very clearly thinking about her sadness (the source of which remains unnamed, though it seems to involve the grandchild), she does not discuss it. She instead displays a dutiful, stoic attitude, internalizing and to a degree ignoring her emotions so as not to create discomfort.
The Grandchild
The grandchild in the poem is, to a degree, innocent and unaware of the grandmother's sadness. They play and draw, benefitting from the grandmother's care and enjoying safety and distraction. However, the poem suggests that the grandmother's distress in some way relates to the child. Indeed, the very fact that it is a grandmother caring for the child, rather than the child's parents, offers a faint hint that the child's home life has undergone some kind of turmoil. The child does not cry as the grandmother does, but they do distractedly watch the "tears" of the teakettle, as if preoccupied by sadness. Meanwhile, they draw " a rigid house /a nd a winding pathway," as well as "a man with buttons like tears," all of which imply that the child is attempting—in a subconscious, childish way—to work through some disruption in the adult domestic sphere.
