Once upon a time there was a little girl.
She loved her grandpa most of all.
And he loved her.
They were everything to each other.
Grandpa was love.
Grandpa was fun.
Grandpa is forever.
We went fishing.
Hours on the boat.
Hours at the lake.
Time with him.
Grandpa was a ferris wheel man.
He ran the ride before I was born.
And after, every year of my life I rode the ferris wheel with him at the county fair.
I remember the tricks he played.
I remember the games he taught me.
He took me to "garbage" sales.
We went to CooCooWiches.
But we never made it there.
My grandpa's overalls.
My grandpa's Butter Rum candies in his pocket.
My grandpa's stories.
My grandpa's smile.
My grandpa's love.
I cannot write his story, not his stories. They are memories fading in my mind. I can remember pieces little bits of them. I cannot keep that promise I made to myself to write his stories. But I can write. I can write for me and for him, my favorite storyteller, my grandpa!
There are some of grandpa's stories that I can tell. These are the things that he told me over and over. Often these were stories of me. They were the things that we did together. Some of them I remember myself, and some of them I was too young to remember. But I hold the stories as a part of my own memories.. almost as if I can remember them.
ReplyDeleteThe spring that I was subbing, was very wet. It made the roads almost impossible to drive on. So one days that I subbed in St. Paul two or more days in a row, I would spend the night at my grandparents house rather than fight my way home. These nights he would tell me stories of his life from the time we sat down to supper until we went to bed. I mistakenly thought I would be able to remember these things. I didn't have a recorder. All of those things have faded to nothingness. But at least, I have written down the ones that I do remember. Any time I think of something more, I write it down. I know that I need to do this or one day they too will be forgotten.
I will always believe that I got at least in part my love for stories, for books, for reading, and for writing from my grandpa.