Images of Grandpa
I bit into one of your "sweet peppers" and sweat broke out on my forehead from the heat of that small bite. Yes I knew better, but still I couldn't resist your twinkling eyes, your full denial "What do you mean? Those peppers are sweet peppers." You loved slipping in a hot one, enjoyed the laughter as someone's face turned bright red, a sly smile on your face as you denied those peppers you’d canned were anything but sweet.
I can see you out in the garden, running your hands through soft soil, tying up huge, overloaded tomato plants, corn with full tassels bowing over, taller than your head. Every spring, no matter how long and dark the winter, you tilled the soft earth, planting onions, harvesting asparagus and squash and kale. As a kid the garden was a jungle towering overhead as we stepped carefully to avoid the precious edible plants. And even things we didn't consider edible were to you.
You stand beside the lake of my childhood, rumaging in an old styrofoam cooler, movements methodical - bait, cast, reel them in. You'd spend hours while I chased down crickets for you and I was horrified when you' d use frogs as live bait. You'd hoot and holler when you fought a catfish on the small tackle you used, but were also careful, because anything that could end up in the frying pan for dinner wasn't getting away. Every Friday night was fishing with Uncle Sonny on Mogador lake. The fishing would have good, if only, according to you, Sonny hadn’t reeled in all the good ones.
"Eat up girl, you're too thin," you'd say as you piled yet another helping on your plate at Thanksgiving. How could I eat up when I'd just been down in the basement "helping" you carve the turkey? You slipped me the best of the turkey whispering delightedly "Now don't tell your Grandma." We'd go upstairs and you would preside over the dinner table in your red flannel shirt, beaming with pleasure at the heaping platters and plates and urging everyone to eat as much as you did - though none of us could keep up.
Its Sunday afternoon, and we're all sitting in the living room visiting with you and Grandma - the football game is on the TV in the background. The telephone rings - just once and not again. "That Sonny-boy, " you'd say, shaking your head, "Just ringing to let me know he's beating me bad this week. I owe him a buck already and his team just scored again." This past week, I found the scorecard for this last year beside your favorite chair. You still own Uncle Sonny fifty-cents on this year, Grandpa. I wish you could come back to moan and groan and pay up.
"Oh I loved that woman," you cried, five years ago, seeing her picture after just having lost her. It was heartbreaking to see your devistation. Irene Bixler was your love, your life, your wife and soul-mate, and you never stopped missing or loving her.
So many images, 95 years of memories of which I only experienced the last third. I don't know about your years in CCC, though your pictures showed a handsome young man, his thick black hair greased to the side. I see pictures of you and Grandma, so young laying together in a park, before you served in WWII. I didn't know you as a father - but I watched you swinging my cousins up and around when they were little, laughing and hollering as they piled on you. And always through the years your soft, sentimental heart was present, reading me a story when I was small, admiring Grandma everytime she entered the room, telling me last Thanksgiving just how lucky you were to have such good kids, how you just didn't know you ever would have survived those last years without their love and their help.
This past fall you told my Mom you'd had a dream, that you'd seen Grandma in a vision. "Ma was there," you said. "I could hear her voice. I saw her and I walked towards her as she walked ahead of me, you know how fast she walked. But I couldn't catch up with her and she wouldn't wait. I guess that means it's not my time yet." You loved us all, but the one you loved most was waiting ahead and now you've finally caught up with her and are together again.
To my Grandpa, George Niemoeller Sr., who died February 23rd, 2:08 pm.
Monday, March 05, 2007
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1 comment:
Oh, K, this is *so* beautiful. You are a wonderful writer!
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