Grandpa Grumps

 

Today's Beema's Bedtime Story was Grandpa Grumps by Katrina Moore. The adorable illustrations and sweet tale of a granddaughter's attempt to connect, find common ground with her grandpa brought tears to my eyes, and allowed fond memories to surface. 

I, too, had a "grumpy grandpa," by all accounts, but he was kind and patient with me. His name was Russell, but everyone called him, "Shorty." When my grandma died, he came to live with us, splitting time between my family in Florida and my aunt's in Ohio. I was eight when he moved in, shy and uncertain of him, given his grumpy reputation! He was home during the day, though, and I was lonely, so while my parents worked, we hung out together. He'd take me to a local auto repair shop where he had friends who hung out, drank coffee and talked about..well, who knows. I didn't pay attention to the conversation; I was just happy to be out and about with him, tooling around in his little truck with the camper top. We found our common ground over fishing (well, I sat on the side of the canal and made bait from Wonder Bread) and our love of animals. He and I once rescued a tortoise from the middle of the road and named him "Charlie." (It turns out, Grandpa nicknamed everything, "Charlie.")  A lifetime gardener, he and grandma would show up for Florida visits with their trunk laden down with veggies for us. To this day, I've never eaten a better tomato! They never owned their own home, but even when residing in a tiny apartment over a strip mall, he somehow found a way to tend a garden. He'd make a deal with some friend or another to "borrow" a plot of land, am sure the landowner was repaid in warm-from-the-ground peppers, 'maters and cukes. Not willing to give that up even when he lived with us in Suburbia, he dug up a section of our yard and got to work. He let me plant flowers, and laughed uproariously when I poured an entire packet of seeds into one hole, resulting in the biggest marigold "bush" I've ever seen. 

We spent a summer fishing, watching tv together (Sanford & Sons was a favorite of his) in the little back bedroom next to mine, and generally getting to know each other. He wasn't a very chatty man, but he had strong opinions and wasn't afraid to share them when necessary. 

Grandpa & Mom

Aunt Katie, Grandpa, Me

He bought me this organ for Christmas, I drove my parents crazy playing it! 

The last time I saw my grandpa was Christmas of 1981 when I was 16 years old, his last trip to Florida before he was diagnosed with lung cancer. As a coal miner and longtime smoker, this didn't come as a surprise to us, but it was devastating nonetheless. Despite his short stature, he was strong, independent and feisty and didn't let anyone take care of him, refused to move in with my aunt even when his health was failing. She visited daily, though, and found him early one morning, having passed away peacefully in his sleep in his little trailer in the woods, surrounded by nature & the squirrel he trained to eat peanuts out of his hand (can you guess the squirrel's name?). 

I think of my grandparents often now that I myself am a grandma. Though we didn't get to visit as often as I'd like, my childhood is imprinted with loving memories of them. I'm grateful for those moments, and hope that my little ones will say the same of me one day. 

Rapunzel~

The Way We Were

I have spent most of the quarantine on a huge project that has occupied my mind, my hands, and my heart. I have gathered up every single photo in my home, begun sorting & scanning, tagging & uploading, then finally filing digitally as well as physically. Since our family are avid photographers and since I inherited both of my parents' collections, this ads up to an enormous amount of photographs dating back to the 1950s. Some of them have been carefully preserved, dated and subject identified, but the majority were stuck in albums or haphazardly tossed into boxes over the years. To my credit, my own personal pictures, especially those from my daughters' younger years, were among the aforementioned, making them easy to sort & file. (Thank you, younger self!) Still, the task is daunting and several times I've closed the door to my craft room closet, thrown up my hands and declared myself finished, announced to my family that they will inherit the mess and can do with it what they wish. But that doesn't last long. A day or two later I decide to peek in, grab a stack, take a deep breath and begin again.

As you might imagine, the process has been not only challenging physically, straining my eyes, my neck, my back as I sit for hours sifting and scanning, but it's been emotionally draining as well. I've dredged up so many lost memories, dusted off forgotten moments in time, become reacquainted with old friends & lovers as well as past versions of myself I thought I'd left behind. Some of this has been happy and exciting, some absolutely wrenching. Letters from my mom, cards from my dad. Journals and calendars filled with stories, snapshots of my life at various stages. Adorable toddler. Awkward, angsty pre-teen. Young adult. New mom. Divorced mom. (Repeat). So much stuff, so much emotion! It can be overwhelming, so I check in with myself, only do as much work in one day as my body & heart feel able. I aim for an hour a day and then see how I feel. Sometimes that's enough and I move on, but other days I can spend four or five hours back there, holed up with my music & memories.

I get so caught up in the task, immersed in whatever era I'm working on, that when I emerge & pass by Beren, sitting in our dining room/pseudo office, I'm surprised to see him,  this person who wasn't a part of "that" life, at least another than a couple of snapshots & calendar entries from one blissful teenage year. Yet here he is, as is my current home, belongings, pets. And as I catch a glance of myself in the mirror, it's not the ten-year or 20-year or even 30-year-old self I see reflected back at me. Who is this older woman, and how do I reconcile her with those other versions? Is she who I expected to be, oh so long ago when I painstakingly sat and preserved those photos, those mementos, knowing that one day I'd be doing exactly as I am right now?

Probably not, and that's part of what I'm processing. As painful as this is, I also am driven, almost manically so, to complete this task, to have my life tidied and in order before...? Before what? Yes, before I die. Morbid, perhaps, but the reality is that I am on the other side of middle age and all that that entails. My memory is already not as sharp as it once was, and if I don't record the stories now, they'll be gone forever. I don't want my children to inherit a mess of random bits of my life, of their lives, without rhyme or reason. I want to sort it out before I pass, leave behind order instead of chaos. In thinking of it this way, I'm not "just" doing a mindless organizational project, or even a therapeutic exercise for myself, it's a labor of love for my family. A gift to them. And it's that mindset, that goal, that keeps me going, photo by photo, memory by memory, moment by moment.

Rapunzel~