I met a man

This has always been one of my  favorite pieces:

On the January 23, 1940, my grandmother Helen passed away. Her death came when my own father was only 12 years old. With her being ill, he had spent much of his childhood without a mother, even  before her death. Still, the stories he told about her were spoken with love and respect and, perhaps, a bit of awe.

He told me of how his mother and father met. His father, being a bit of a rough neck, owned a Harley Davidson (very very progressive for the 20th century). He boldly rode up to Helen and asked her for a date.
She, being strong willed herself, said, “Yes, if you sell the crazy motorbike.”
Within the week, they had their first date and my grandfather, never again, owned a ‘crazy motor bike’.”

My father also talked proudly of how his mother convinced his father to donated money the Catholic Church in Osakis, to build a new Church building. When I was young, he would take me down into the church basement and show me the paintings his mother had done, still hanging on the walls.

I asked him, years later, why he never took us down to the cemetery to visit her grave.
“I talk to Mother and Mark every day,” he said, “when I come out to feed the deer. They are closer to me here, than in any cemetery.”
Mark was his older brother (twin to Jerome). He was going to be the best man in my parent’s wedding but died just less than six months before they were married.

My father kept my grandmother's funeral card in his wallet until the day he died. He borrowed it to me few years back to let me make a copy of it. I photo copied it and cleaned it up to make it look nice and pretty. I wish now that I had left it as it was, tattered and scuffed up, from years of love.

January 23rd, my father never forgot this date.   This morning, as I dropped my girls off at school, the  scent of a wood fire filled the air. No single scent can bring me closer to my father, on this day already filled with memories.

The following was Written on Thursday, November 4, 2010

January gardens and late grandparents have one thing in common, the ability to be perfect in your mind’s eye. One set of my grandparents died before I was born and the other set lived so far away as to be strangers. Their photographs, decades old, hang on my wall, covered with a light layer of dust and sadness.

“It's all right, children. Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it. I am sure that we shall never forget Tiny Tim, or this first parting that there was among us.” The Muppet’s Christmas Carol

I wonder at the fates of my world that, save my husband and children, the two people that mattered the most to me, were the first to leave. It wasn’t until after their deaths, I began to grasp what I had missed not having met or known my own grandparents. It is a relationship not to be squandered or abused.

I met a man recently, even though I have known him all of my life. He lives in a box in my closet and hangs in a frame on my wall. Sorting through mouse shredded letters and tattered news articles, I found a man’s thoughts. Joys and anguishes.

“Pleasant Memories, Sorrow and deaths of dear ones, a fine family, fishing - hunting- friends many- some dead, Mother, Jack & Mark . Boating - hiking - rakings - painting Bldg docks - trimming trees. Pleasure must be paid for by cash and Work. I've had my good share of both – “
Love from your Pal and father.

Tommy Gibbons he is/was my Grandfather. I never met him, as he passed away six months before I was born. But wow, the stories I heard of him growing up.

He fought the great Jack Dempsey, the Mansssa Mauler, the Manhattan Madness, going fifteen rounds. He fought Gene Tunney, as well. He was King Boreas of the St. Paul Winter Carnival. A Knight of St. Gregory, he built an entire church (by hand, I bet)! As the Sheriff of Ramsey County, he brought the entire mob to its knees during Prohibition! Then, for his second marriage he snared the heiress to the Leinenkugel Brewery.

He slayed lakes of fish, fields of pheasants and forests of deer! Mostly though, he was young and handsome. He has been perpetually 32 years old my entire life. He was married, of course, to the most beautiful woman ever. My grandparents are perfect in their little glass world on the wall.

I can live without perfection. What I would give to trade in a few of those fabulous stories for an afternoon on Lake Osakis with my Grandfather and a lake full of bass. Oh, to have nothing but the grebes to serenade us and the sunlight to warm us and time to get to know each other.