I know I’m a bit late, but I’ve been contemplating what exactly I should post to close out 2006 and usher in the next year. I considered doing another month-by-month wrap-up, but as I started on it, well, it just didn’t seem very exciting to summarize all the things you can read about in detail by just hitting the archives.
I had couple other ideas, but, well, you can forget them. Here we are and this is my New Year’s Post…
I know to some this might sound odd, but I stayed home last night and watched Superman Returns. After that, I watched the special features on Disc 2 of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I fell asleep in my recliner shortly after midnight with my dog at my feet. (Actually, I fell asleep a bit earlier, but recieved a text message that woke me up.)
I decided that I’d spent a good amount of time this year working on my house, and I really wanted to spend my New Year’s Eve by myself, right here at home, enjoying the fruits of my labor and the comfort and coziness I’d built. So I did.
I slept in this morning. When I finally got out of bed, had my coffee and read the news online, I realized that the thing ringing in the back of my mind needed some attention. Today, as was every January 1st, is my grandfather’s birthday. My Papaw is 77. I had a lot to do, so I debated: would I call, visit him in person, or just let it pass?
I got to work on some stuff around the house while I pondered when suddenly I got a call from my mother. They were all (the whole family) taking my grandfather out for lunch, and wondered if I could meet them. I thought about it, and was at that time pretty heavy into my work, so I told her I couldn’t. I just had too much to do.
After we hung up, I thought about it and regretted the decision. But I just had too much to do.
A little while later, my mom called again to ask if I wanted to “go in” on buying some lottery tickets as a birthday present. I told her ’sure’. But just then something hit me. I had to go. So I told her I needed to hit the shower first and might be a bit late, but that I was going to meet them.
So what came over me? Everything.
Several years ago, shortly after I had relocated to Los Angeles, my parents and 2 youngest siblings came to visit me over Halloween weekend. My mom told me that my grandmother was sick. I talked to my Mamaw on the phone shortly after about me coming home to Indiana to visit her. She told me no, not to make a special trip, and that we’d see each other when I was home visiting for Thanksgiving.
She died Nov 8. I never got to tell her anything until I was looking over her dead body in her coffin. By then it was too late.
I wish things had been different, but my “real dad” was never around much when I was growing up. I am Papaw’s oldest/first grandson. I wish I could remember things more clearly. I remember going with him and Mamaw to garage sales on Saturdays during the summer. I remember spending the night with him sometimes (and how his house smelled funny) so we could get up at 3am, load the truck and drive to the flea market in Cincinnati to sell the stuff we’d picked up at the garage sales. I remember sitting on his lap while driving home and him letting me steer. I remember the “guess the temperature” game we used to play driving down Hwy 74 as we approached the bank with the big sign that displayed it. He bought me my first (and taught me how to shoot it) slingshot. He gave me my first real bicycle (an old, green Scwhinn Tornado) that was my “motorcycle” when my brother and I played “CHiPs” or Silver when we played “The Lone Ranger”… riding up and down the driveway. I remember the red packs of Pall Mall’s that he used to smoke. I remember helping him burn the trash and how excited we’d get when an aerosol can exploded. I vaguely remember the first time he took me through the tool-and-die shop where he worked before he retired. I remember riding on his lap when we mowed the grass. I remember the garage (at the red-brick house) was alwasy so full of junk one could never image parking a car in there. Luckily there was room for our bikes. I remember his workbech, and the big vice, the tiny screws, nails, nuts and bolts each in their own little drawer and screwdrivers, etc, hanging from the wall each in their own place… and the noisy air-compressor when we needed air in our tires or a basketball.
Later, I remember spending afternoons, after school, hanging out with him at the antique store he and my Mamaw opened on Van Avenue. He is Catholic, but I can vaguely remember us having some discussions about God and things of that nature. I don’t think he ever came out and said it, because Mamaw and my mom would have had cows, each their own, respectively, but he conveyed that he held to the traditions but was skeptical.
I remember asking him once what the greatest invention/technological advancement was in his lifetime that he thinks has had the greatest impact. His answer: the automatic transmission. I just thought that was funny… because I much prefer a manual.
Years later, when I had my motorcycle accident, I won’t go into all the details, but he was right there with me the whole way through.
And when it came to buying my house, second only to my mom’s, it was his approval I needed.
Anyway… the whole point is that my Papaw is the closest thing to a “father” I’ve ever known. He was probably more of a father than most kids from a single-parent-family will ever know. But he’s getting older now. I hope he doesn’t read this, because I don’t want to get him down. But like my grandmother, one of these birthday’s might be his last.
It’s been a long time since I’ve told him how much I love him and how much he’s meant in my life. But sometimes we just get so busy that we forget or we think we can just put it off. We keep thinking, “the right time will come”.
Recent Comments