4 posts tagged “family”

There are two fishing poles out in the shed that weren't there yesterday. I get a little kick in the gut when I think about them, one of those happy-sad feelings that is both a hug and a pinch.

Yesterday after work, Lee and I took tacos over to my grandparents house. My grandmother has always had a thing for Taco Bell tacos. We had dinner and a little catch-uppy chitchat. Afterwards the sun had gone down enough that we could venture outside to sit in the shade and enjoy their yard.

With my grandfather wheelchair bound for 7-years now, and my grandmother recently recovered from surgery and not able to get around like she used to, they've had to let go of a lot of hobbies and passtimes. But one thing that amazes me is that they STILL have the best veggie garden in our little corner of suburbia. We left with a bag of cucumbers big enough to hold us over for the rest of the summer, if they wouldn't go bad first.

Anyway, after we marveled over the veggies and chatted with the neighbors, my grandfather started gesturing for my grandmother to go into their garage. After a while, he made it clear through their quiet and intricate way of non-verbal communication that he wanted her to get out his fishing poles. He wanted Lee to look at them and see if he wanted them, since he isn't using them anymore.

Lee was incredibly touched. And so was I. My grandfather loved fishing. His favorite thing to do was get up well before sunrise on a Saturday and head off to plant himself and his fishing gear by a riverbank. Now and then, he took me or went with my father. But mostly, he went alone, because he loved his solitary time with nature even more than he loved the act of fishing itself. That he's unable to enjoy that passion in his retirement years, when he could go every day if he wanted to, makes me want to cry. Him wanting to give up those poles is his way of saying "this part of my life is done, and I want someone who will enjoy it as much as I did to have them." It breaks my heart.

But it also makes me feel all warm and grateful inside that the person he wants to have them is Lee. He recognizes in my sweetheart that side of himself, that early-to-riser who is both healed and inspired by being alone with the woods and a body of water.

My grandfather can't say the words. But I recognized something in the way he held the poles reverently after my grandmom handed them to him, and then how he gently handed them to Lee. I saw it in the way they examined the poles together - Lee talking with words and Grandad with his hands and his eyes and his nods, about how too much time languishing in the garage has battered the poles a little but a fixin' here and there will make them good as new. 

He can't say the words. But in every action and in his smile there was mourning for his own past and a warm and loving approval of the future I have chosen - the simple and age-old happiness of a man who sees a bit himself in the guy one of his own little girls has brought into the family fold.

I've been a scribbler as long as I can remember. As a child, I would often spend weekends traveling from Maryland to West Virginia with my grandparents. On the way, my grandmother would tell me stories of her childhood, growing up in the country with 5 brothers and sisters, as Grandad drove.

Those stories of a life and time so different from my own fascinated me, and I started writing them all down in the big block letters than only a child can do right. I wrote a booklet of family memoirs again in 1999, in my late 20's. Thankfully, there's a big difference in my writing skills between the first attempt and that one. Along the way, I made a lot of other attempts at telling the stories of our family.

Grandmom has kept every single one of those scribbled tales, from the ones done in crayon to the carefully word processed and bound adult efforts. She even kept the one where I tried illustrating. Of course, I'd chosen to draw an outhouse, because I was fascinated by the fact that my great-grandparents in West Virginia didn't have an indoor toilet until I was 7 or so.

When my 10-year-old niece visits my grandparents, Grandmom pulls out all those booklets and the two of them sit on the couch and pore over them. My niece has recently started writing down her own tales. Like I did at her age, she puts these little stories together and gives them to my Grandmom as gifts on Mother's Day, or just because.

She tells the same tales of country kids from another era growing up in the mountains. But she also tells her own stories - her trips to the cabin with my parents, her first experience riding a horse, getting into mischief with her friends. 

In her most recent tale, she writes of how my grandmother told her that she misses my stories. It has been a long time since I've written any. And so, my niece continues, she decided to start writing her own, so Grandmom wouldn't miss them anymore. She says "that's the magic of family," how she can be like me in that way and pick up that torch.

This little girl writes with a descriptiveness and flow and insightfulness that amazes me and makes me so proud. I got a little misty-eyed on Mother's Day, when I was reading her most recent tales. I was the kind of kid you would expect to sit around writing - a little shy and introverted, gawky and unsure of myself and my place in the neighborhood pecking order. My niece isn't that kid. She's outgoing and into just about anything from dance to swimming. But she writes anyway, and it is evident that she's got the bug.

 She writes. She writes beautifully, and with the voice of someone who will always want and need to write. And that makes me so proud and happy.

... on "Me and My Monday."

I was all set to get up and do my first one this morning, then realized Lee took the camera to work with him. He likes to roam about and take pictures during his lunch break, especially this time of year when things start coming back to life again.

So instead, I'll just say I hope everyone had a Happy Easter.

Mine started when we arrived at my parents' house and I was greeted by my niece saying "guess what? Bailey ate the Easter Bunny!"

Bailey is the golden retriever who just went in for surgery after a stomach blockage he got eating things he shouldn't eat almost killed him. He just got the staples removed two weeks ago. And now he's eating Easter bunnies.

OK, not Easter Bunnies.

It turns out, though, that what DID happen was that when my mother let her dogs out Saturday night, she couldn't get Bailey to come back in. They have a huge backyard, and the entire back half is filled with trees and bushes. He finally traipsed to the back door with his tail wagging and something hanging out of his mouth. The "something" was a bunny.

Mom's response was to freak and drag Dad out of bed to deal with it. I don't blame her.

Bailey's timing really sucks.

This is such a busy, hectic time of year, and there's so much going on I can't seem to form a coherent thought. So instead, here are a bunch of half-baked ones.

1. Tuesday night was my father's birthday. I'll give him his present tomorrow night, when we have our annual gathering o'holiday cheer at his bar.

My dad is perhaps the hardest person on my gift list. He should be easy, because he's got tons of interests. But he also tends to go and get everything he wants for himself before we even realize he wants it. His birthday falling so close to Christmas makes it even harder, because I always want his gifts to be extra special and unique so he isn't one of those December babies who feels screwed by having a holiday season birthday.

But this year, I think I got the perfect birthday gift:

Deadwood

2 comments

Dad and I both absolutely adored this show. We'd watch it every Sunday and then talk about it when we saw each other at the pub later in the week. And he loves decorating both his bar and his cabin with stuff like this.

2. Dear Steelers:

PLEASE win tonight. I should go to bed early rather than stay up and watch you play, knowing that I have one more workday to knock out and then the party tomorrow night. But being the dolt that I am, I am going to hang in there with you until the bitter end. Make it worth my while, and I'll love you forever. Well, I'll love you forever anyway, but a win would do wonders for my pissy attitude.

3. I guess you can tell by the way I post stuff about presents here that my family does not read my blog. They don't know about it. Since I'm showing some stick-to-it-ive-ness with this one, I'll probably tell mom about it, after Christmas. Dad is one of the few people left in the world who never gets online. He doesn't have an email account and I don't think he's ever gone on the internet on his own. When he wants something looked up, he asks mom to do it.

4. I am in the cool but weird situation of sharing an office with my old boss. This is cool because he's not just a former boss, he's a mentor and friend, and I wish every day that he was still at the helm (that's a whole other story!). He retired, but is staying on part time to be involved in the project I'm working on, which is how we became office roomies. It is weird because I also happen to be in charge of handling his retirement party. Have you ever tried to plan a secret party at work for someone who is sitting right across the room from you? It ain't easy!

5. Lee and I have hit that stage in our relationship where we have our own language, words that make sense to us but make everyone else think we're nuts. Here's an excerpt from last night's conversation:

Him: Have you seen the case for my glasses? 

Me: It's on the living room end table. 

Him: How did it get there? I could have sworn I left it on the bedroom nightstand.

Me: You did. I moved it so it wouldn't get weazed.

Him: Oh, glad you thought of that. If that gets weazed I'm screwed.

Translation: Don't leave anything you want to stay intact in the bedroom, sweetie, or the weasels will hide it, destroy it, or hide it and then destroy it. Makes perfect sense in our world.

6. I am the laziest slob on the planet. I try to use the fact that my house is tiny as an excuse, but really, it's just me. I have a friend who has to travel for work this week, and flies into the airport near my house late Friday night. Rather than make the 2-hour trek home so late, she's crashing at my place and heading home in the morning. I wandered into the spare bedroom last night and realized that her bed was a mountain of clean laundry I haven't bothered to put away, coats we haven't bothered to hang up, Christmas presents that haven't yet been wrapped, wrapping paper we have yet to use up, and a pile of papers I brought home from work to deal with at home and still haven't touched.

Guess what I spent last night doing? If I was the resolution-making type, one for 2008 would be to stop being lazy and sloppy. Glad I don't make resolutions!