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This is me, ages ago.  For my entire childhood this solidly square patch of what were always called “golden glows” stood outside my grandparents’ house.  The stems were so thick I always imagined some secret sort of being might want to make a home inside them. In the far upper right you can just make out my grandfather’s truck.  He died when I was twelve and I still remember my mother hanging up the phone and grimly informing my sister and I of his passing.  My first thought was it was impossible since none of my grandparents could possibly ever die.  We did not go to the funeral; it was thought we were too young.  I dreaded going to my grandparents’ house after that but it was unavoidable.  I think it was only a week or two after his death and everyone was so…normal.  I guess I didn’t expect them to be sitting around in black weeping, but they were almost too pragmatic about it.  His five children, all quite grown and then some, were squabbling over his left-behind possessions.  Who would get this or that?  Who cared, I wondered then.  I realized then for the first time my relatives were all deeply awful people. My father and I took a garbage bag to clean out his truck.  Behind the seat were hundreds and hundreds of discarded Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup wrappers.  My grandfather ate a bland diet after his first heart-attack and it is possible the clandestine indulgences in fatty candy did not help him survive the fatal second one…but in way, I was glad that he had a secret that had nothing to do with anyone else.  It made him seem more human than just a man who was always old the entire time I knew him.  It was like he won, somehow…won what?  Freedom from rules and the mundane horror of life? The house was awful without him in it, the brown faded armchair he always sat in, his place at the table littered with magazines and books he was reading….I remember in particular Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf with a bookmark halfway through and I realized with a sick feeling in my stomach he would never finish the ending. In many ways I never felt close to him and never had a meaningful conversation with him but I did respect him and did share his last name and a sense of curiosity of what made him the old man I always knew.  One of my deepest regrets is that I did not try to spend more time with him.  I was a little afraid of him for no real reason besides the fact he lived on Planet Grandpa.  Once he offered to take my sister and I to a farm auction but we shyly declined; I wish we had said yes.  I think perhaps no one knew him well at all.  He grew up in an era of horses as draft animals, knowledge which quickly became obsolete.  He lost a hand in an accident with a chainsaw, but it never stopped him from cutting his own wood or driving or doing anything else that might be better served with two.  He was completely inscrutable.  Perhaps the nicest thing my father ever said to me in my life was that my grandfather had liked my sister and I best of all, since he saw us the most out of all his grandchildren.  And to that end, he always was sure to buy us something special for our birthdays, even if it was something odd like a throw pillow or a board-game that was the wrong age for us to play.  He always showed up with ice-cream cakes and those caramels with the nougat center and made sure we got our fill of the leftover Halloween candy, since no trick-or-treaters ever stopped at their house.  If he were around today, I’m not sure I would know what to say to him still, but I hope in some small way he knew I cared. I’m not sure why I think of him today, but seeing the photograph brought it all back; flowers with a secret core, complicated inner lives of grandfathers, behind the truck seat overflowing with orange wrappers.  I hope they tasted good.

This is me, ages ago.  For my entire childhood this solidly square patch of what were always called “golden glows” stood outside my grandparents’ house.  The stems were so thick I always imagined some secret sort of being might want to make a home inside them.

In the far upper right you can just make out my grandfather’s truck.  He died when I was twelve and I still remember my mother hanging up the phone and grimly informing my sister and I of his passing.  My first thought was it was impossible since none of my grandparents could possibly ever die.  We did not go to the funeral; it was thought we were too young.  I dreaded going to my grandparents’ house after that but it was unavoidable.  I think it was only a week or two after his death and everyone was so…normal.  I guess I didn’t expect them to be sitting around in black weeping, but they were almost too pragmatic about it.  His five children, all quite grown and then some, were squabbling over his left-behind possessions.  Who would get this or that?  Who cared, I wondered then.  I realized then for the first time my relatives were all deeply awful people.

My father and I took a garbage bag to clean out his truck.  Behind the seat were hundreds and hundreds of discarded Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup wrappers.  My grandfather ate a bland diet after his first heart-attack and it is possible the clandestine indulgences in fatty candy did not help him survive the fatal second one…but in way, I was glad that he had a secret that had nothing to do with anyone else.  It made him seem more human than just a man who was always old the entire time I knew him.  It was like he won, somehow…won what?  Freedom from rules and the mundane horror of life?

The house was awful without him in it, the brown faded armchair he always sat in, his place at the table littered with magazines and books he was reading….I remember in particular Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf with a bookmark halfway through and I realized with a sick feeling in my stomach he would never finish the ending.

In many ways I never felt close to him and never had a meaningful conversation with him but I did respect him and did share his last name and a sense of curiosity of what made him the old man I always knew.  One of my deepest regrets is that I did not try to spend more time with him.  I was a little afraid of him for no real reason besides the fact he lived on Planet Grandpa.  Once he offered to take my sister and I to a farm auction but we shyly declined; I wish we had said yes.  I think perhaps no one knew him well at all.  He grew up in an era of horses as draft animals, knowledge which quickly became obsolete.  He lost a hand in an accident with a chainsaw, but it never stopped him from cutting his own wood or driving or doing anything else that might be better served with two.  He was completely inscrutable.  Perhaps the nicest thing my father ever said to me in my life was that my grandfather had liked my sister and I best of all, since he saw us the most out of all his grandchildren.  And to that end, he always was sure to buy us something special for our birthdays, even if it was something odd like a throw pillow or a board-game that was the wrong age for us to play.  He always showed up with ice-cream cakes and those caramels with the nougat center and made sure we got our fill of the leftover Halloween candy, since no trick-or-treaters ever stopped at their house.  If he were around today, I’m not sure I would know what to say to him still, but I hope in some small way he knew I cared.

I’m not sure why I think of him today, but seeing the photograph brought it all back; flowers with a secret core, complicated inner lives of grandfathers, behind the truck seat overflowing with orange wrappers.  I hope they tasted good.

#family
#childhood
#nostalgia
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