The Paths My Grandfather Showed Me
His wisdom lingers in the nooks and crannies of my heart.
Oh, how I loved my grandfather! For most of my growing up years, Sunday meant going to church and then taking our customary drive to my grandparent’s house for supper. We had a routine, my grandfather and me. I’d climb up on his red recliner rocker and he’d hold me on his knees and tell me stories about robins and squirrels and opossums. Before starting one of these story sessions, he’d pick a cigar out of the wooden box on the fancy three legged table beside his chair. He took care to unwrap the cellophane so the Dutch Masters cigar band stayed intact. Then he’d take my hand, place the band on my stubby finger, and tell me I was his dimpled darling.
I’d lean back in his lap and he’d rock me as he told his stories, pausing now and then to blow fat smoke rings that floated around his head in the shifting air coming in from the open window behind him. I watched, captivated, as he puffed on his fat cigar while we rocked. I still miss that smell of cherry tobacco smoke mingling with the scent of his English Leather aftershave.
He’d brush back the strands of his thick white hair with his rugged hands, craggy from years of physical labor and tough athleticism. He’d been a semi-pro boxer in his youth and when I was old enough, he taught me how to throw a punch and protect my face with my fists. The top of his shirt was unbuttoned, exposing the t-shirt pocket that held the battery portion of his hearing aid. I liked to reach up and touch the scratchy stubble of salt and pepper beard that grew from his firm set jaw.
Sometimes, when I thought he wasn’t looking, I’d sneak my hand down the side of the chair and lock the brace so the chair wouldn’t rock. I was so small I had to lean way over, lifting the side of my body up so it must have looked like I was about to do a cartwheel right out of the chair. But I was so clever I knew Bepaw wouldn’t notice.
“Whot hoppened?” he’d say, using exaggerated O’s instead of A’s to make me laugh. Then he’d look around as though he might spot some little creature sneaking about the room.
I’d jump off his lap and point at the brace. “I locked it,” I’d squeal between bursts of laughter. Then he’d chase me out the side door, down the porch steps and I’d run toward the path beside his garden. He’d let me get out of sight beside the tall corn stalks before he came after me, knowing I’d be hiding in the back of the yard among the sunflowers.
Bepaw’s sunflowers fascinated me. I loved to stand beneath the towering, funny yellow flowers and survey his whole beautiful garden with its rows of corn and tomatoes and greens and carrots and beets and radishes and everything you could imagine. When I heard his feet stomping the ground near me, I’d jump out from my hiding place and scream “boo” and run back toward the path, but he always caught me and lifted me in the air high above his head so I felt like I was flying. Then he’d set me gently on my feet, take my hand and we’d walk to the area behind the garden where he’d built a horseshoe pit and he’d teach me how to aim and toss. Of course, I could barely lift the horseshoes so he’d place his hand under mine and give me an assist. He loved to tell me the story of how he’d won the county championship almost fifty years earlier. He’d light his cigar and we’d continue our stroll.
We’d step back through the rows of vegetables with care, then pick the ripest tomatoes and cucumbers and place them in a bucket to take to my grandmother. He’d stop to wash the vegetables in the clear well water then set the bucket on the porch. Sometimes a bird would land in the birdbath and splatter water, spraying my face. This made me think of splashing around in the inflatable pool in my own backyard and I’d giggle. He’d hold his finger up to his mouth and lean against the edge of the porch and we’d be very quiet as we watched two sparrows making a nest in the birdhouse he’d built. Often he’d point to a squirrel hiding nuts under the porch and promise that after dinner we‘d get some peanut butter to spread on the the giant oak tree trunk to feed the critters.
Before going inside we’d wander to the front yard to pick violets. While we were picking flowers, Bepaw asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I always said a hairdresser, which troubled him because he wanted me to be an artist. He’d sit down on the ground and set me on his knee and tell me that I was born to be a great one and I could be whatever I wanted to be. I was his special dimpled darling, after all.
Once we’d collected a big enough bouquet for my grandmother’s centerpiece, we went inside and presented them to her to put in a vase. Then I’d sit until time for dinner and style the hair on my dolls that I kept in the ottoman at the foot of Bepaw’s recliner while he played the “Marine’s Hymn” on his harmonica.
When my grandmother called out, “dinner’s ready in the dining car” we’d all gather in our seats in the dining room. My family would link hands as Bepaw spoke from his place at the head of the table. “We thank thee Lord for the blessings we are about to receive.” “Amen,” we said in unison and my parents and grandparents starting passing dishes around in all directions. They let me serve myself which made me feel like a grown-up.
After dinner, it was game time and Bepaw did rope tricks and ate match fire, and told jokes. I’d perform the dance I’d just learned in tap class with my toddler sister on the step landing stage we shared with the old wooden spinning wheel my ancestors used to spin their cloth. Sometimes we’d have headstand contests. And then we’d go out and sit on the porch glider and squirrels would scurry up on the porch to eat peanuts out of my grandfather’s hand. I thought Bepaw was magical.
Later he’d show me clippings of his political cartoons published in “The Washington Star” in the 1930s. I wasn’t old enough to comprehend until years later what it meant for him to give up his drawing career and choose the stability of his job as a parcel postman to support his family.
Before I went home he’d draw me a cartoon on a piece of scrap paper of a middle-aged man with bushy black eyebrows, smoking a fat cigar with rings of smoke circling to the top of the page.
Years later when I was visiting with my small children, he commanded me to “get up there on the step landing and sing me a song, Linda Gale.”
“Bepaw, I haven’t done that since I was a little girl.”
“Well then,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s about time you did it again?”
Instead, I picked up an envelope and a ballpoint pen from the table next to his chair and leaned over to get a magazine off the rack on the other side. “Here,” I said, placing the magazine on his lap with the envelope on top of it and putting the pen in his calloused hand. “Why don’t you draw me a cartoon?” I still have that torn envelope with his familiar self-portrait caricature.
A few years ago, when my siblings and I were cleaning out my parent’s house after they’d passed, we found a letter Bepaw had written me when I was five months old.
“Just about the time you will be big enough to understand and remember (if God wills it that way) — I am going to impart some of the woodlore and knowledge of fields, streams and wildlife of God’s furry and feathered little creatures to you and we are going to have such wonderful times together — the princess & grandpa.”
My love of nature, devotion to gardening, and joy for storytelling are all gifts from my grandfather. He would be especially proud of my flower garden and my recent flair for iris breeding.
I feel him with me when I’m working in my garden, filling a bird feeder, or calling out “how are you today?” to the deer roaming around my property. And if a warbler happens to visit, knocking on one of my windows, as happens sometimes here in the woods where I live, I pay close attention, because I’m certain it is bringing me a message from Bepaw.
