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31_days2005-09-04 07:53 pm
serena-b.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2005-09-04 07:53 pm
[Sept. 04] [Original Fiction] Grandfather
Title: Grandfather
Day/Theme: September 4: I wish
Series: Original Fiction
Rating: PG 13 (language)
By the time I knew him, my grandfather was a gruffly cynical man.
His glasses had lenses as thick as coke bottle bottoms housed inside thicker black frames. He wore his hair slicked down and parted slightly off center. Sometimes he had a thin mustache growing above his straight mouth. He always smelled of Old Spice. Every time I smell that scent I can’t help but think of him.
He was born on the fourth of July; a party with fireworks and barbecue were his birthday gift to us every year.
The few times I ever saw him completely happy: playing cards with my parents and assorted aunts and uncles, working away in one of his many gardens on the weekends while listening to the baseball game on his transistor radio, passing out prizes to us grandkids after the Easter egg hunt every year.
When my grandfather would eat a bowl of vanilla ice-crème he’d give it to the dog before he’d entirely finished. Smokey, a little grey toy poodle that smelled like a combination of wet dog and piss, would lick the bowl clean within seconds.
My grandmother would say, ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that.’
Popi would let out a sound akin to a grunt. ‘Wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which one fills up first.’
Then followed my grandmother’s admonishing, ‘Norman! Not in front of the children!’
Of course, this amused the hell out of me and my cousins; we’d fall into balls of giggling beings on their living room rug which always brought a smile to his lips.
He was missing a finger on his right hand. I remember staring at the empty spot on his hand, too afraid to ask about it. Many years later I found out that it had been shot off during WWII. One of my older cousins told me he had been a translator during the war; his German heritage had come into play for our side.
There is a vague memory of him saying there are three things you should never talk about unless you wanted to start an argument: Religion and Politics were two of them, I can’t remember the third.
When he died it wasn’t sudden, he had been sick for a long time. Years of consuming alcohol, among other things, had poisoned his liver.
My mother says the man we knew was not the man she had grown up with as her father. She said he knew he was dying and he was trying to atone for things, and that somehow made him less of a bastard then he had been for years.
I often wonder who he really was, this man that was my mother’s father. What had he been like before the war and years of raising children had changed him into the man we knew? It’s too late now to ever know, everyone that knew anything is gone.
Despite what he always said about it, I can’t help thinking, ‘I wish…’
Day/Theme: September 4: I wish
Series: Original Fiction
Rating: PG 13 (language)
By the time I knew him, my grandfather was a gruffly cynical man.
His glasses had lenses as thick as coke bottle bottoms housed inside thicker black frames. He wore his hair slicked down and parted slightly off center. Sometimes he had a thin mustache growing above his straight mouth. He always smelled of Old Spice. Every time I smell that scent I can’t help but think of him.
He was born on the fourth of July; a party with fireworks and barbecue were his birthday gift to us every year.
The few times I ever saw him completely happy: playing cards with my parents and assorted aunts and uncles, working away in one of his many gardens on the weekends while listening to the baseball game on his transistor radio, passing out prizes to us grandkids after the Easter egg hunt every year.
When my grandfather would eat a bowl of vanilla ice-crème he’d give it to the dog before he’d entirely finished. Smokey, a little grey toy poodle that smelled like a combination of wet dog and piss, would lick the bowl clean within seconds.
My grandmother would say, ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that.’
Popi would let out a sound akin to a grunt. ‘Wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which one fills up first.’
Then followed my grandmother’s admonishing, ‘Norman! Not in front of the children!’
Of course, this amused the hell out of me and my cousins; we’d fall into balls of giggling beings on their living room rug which always brought a smile to his lips.
He was missing a finger on his right hand. I remember staring at the empty spot on his hand, too afraid to ask about it. Many years later I found out that it had been shot off during WWII. One of my older cousins told me he had been a translator during the war; his German heritage had come into play for our side.
There is a vague memory of him saying there are three things you should never talk about unless you wanted to start an argument: Religion and Politics were two of them, I can’t remember the third.
When he died it wasn’t sudden, he had been sick for a long time. Years of consuming alcohol, among other things, had poisoned his liver.
My mother says the man we knew was not the man she had grown up with as her father. She said he knew he was dying and he was trying to atone for things, and that somehow made him less of a bastard then he had been for years.
I often wonder who he really was, this man that was my mother’s father. What had he been like before the war and years of raising children had changed him into the man we knew? It’s too late now to ever know, everyone that knew anything is gone.
Despite what he always said about it, I can’t help thinking, ‘I wish…’