. On Remembering .

I watched a man walk into school today with a slow gait. His boots were scuffed and his back was haunched. He was most definitely someone's grandfather, but the thing that struck me the most - the thing that stuck with me all afternoon, was what he was wearing. Soft, worn denim jeans and a white t-shirt tucked carefully in. He reminded me of my grandpa.

I only have one solid, hearty memory of Captain Jack. Time has waged a war on my memory bank, and slowly, the slides containing our moments have slipped away. There are stories about him that are told over and over and over again. A crackling laugh. Greying sideburns. Strong. Calloused hands. He was a good man. 

My memory is really very simple. I crawled into his rocking chair (the same that sits in Tuck's room), and he held me on his lap while he read the Falls City Journal. He smelled like fried sausage (probably what he'd had for breakfast), and that special smell that lingered in that house all the way through my time in high school. He pretended to read and I poked at the pages until he bit at my ear and tickled me enough to surrender and crawl off of his lap. 

“When someone dies they can be any age you remember can't they?" she asked. As I tried to think of a reply she continued, "You probably think about the grown-up Tess because you were still close to her. But when I woke up I thought of her when she was three wearing a fairy skirt I'd got her in the Woolworth's and a policeman's helmet. Her wand was a wooden spoon. On the bus yesterday, I imagined holding her when she was two days old. I felt the warmth of her. I remembered all her fingers clasped around my finger so tiny they didn't even meet. I remembered the shape of her head and stroking the nape of her neck till she slept. I remembered her smell. She smelled of innocence. Other times she's thirteen and so pretty that I worry for her everytime I see a man look at her. All of those Tesses are my daughter.”  - Rosamund Lupton, Sister

I mostly remember his soft white shirt, his old, worn jeans, and how he smelled. I remember his bushy eyebrows, and the black hair on his arms as he wrapped them around me. Those are the things I remember. 

He would've been the cool grandpa that everyone wanted to hang out with. He would've been thoughtful, he would've given good advice. He would've told good stories and he would probably still have wild eyebrows and a booming laugh. 

I'm glad I have that one memory. It's the one of the man that loved on his granddaughter so hard one summer morning that she remembers it even now - 25 years later. 

xoxo, B.