Grandfather [writing prompt]

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PRACTICE

Write a scene or story involving a grandfather.

Write for fifteen minutes. When you’re finished, post your practice in the comments section.

And if you post, please be sure to give feedback to a few other writers.

grandfather

Photo by aroid.

Here’s my practice:

We had dinner with him, the old man, at a trendy steakhouse in town. We went there all the time, and to afford it we steered clear of the steaks and had burgers and margaritas instead. The place was famous for their cocktails and on the drink menu they listed the year of each drink’s creation. Margarita’s were invented in 1941.

My grandfather isn’t related by blood. He’s not actually my grandfather, but that’s not part of the story. He grew up in Los Angeles, the city where all my family found themselves at some point in the middle of the last century. He loved jazz, and would walk through the halls of his mostly-white high school thinking of mostly-black nightclubs they would go to at night filled with smoke and red light and dark men who played music that sounded to him like scotch and dancing and oak wood in the fireplace of a cabin nobody ever went to anymore. I think it was then he realized his family had betrayed him, that he realized his joy and purpose wouldn’t be found in a Presbyterian church building. It was in the dark nooks, the dusty corners of life. It was in the soil and the pads of your fingers sliding along the soft keys of your clarinet. He began to despise his father’s well-coordinated world.

And when Obama ran for office, he voted for him because he was from Chicago, that haven for jazz.

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About the Author

Joe Bunting (@joebunting)

Joe is a ghostwriter, editor, and an aspiring fiction author. He writes and edits books that change lives. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=577106571 Thuy Yau

    The girl could almost feel his pain, his helplessness, his grief. She stood in the corner of the room, scared to move closer. Her emotions were running wild.

    His body didn’t move, it was as still as a statue; the blankets hiding him away, just like his presence had been doing in the past 5 years.

    She cried for him. She cried for his health, his incapacitation, his inability to do anything. She cried for her grandfather.

    The hospital room looked so dark, despite its brightly-lit bulbs. It felt so empty, despite all the cards, flowers and goodbyes.

    She didn’t know why he had Alzheimer’s disease. She couldn’t understand the reason. Her short 11 years of life could only comprehend so much.

    She inched closer to him, taking baby steps, knowing this would be her last chance at a goodbye.

    Her grandfather opened and shut his eyes, determination showing across his face.

    “What is it… my little.. girl?”, he whispered under his weak breath.

    She put her lips to her grandfather’s face and said, “I just wanted to give you one last kiss goodbye..”

    And with that, the man of 85, who was loved by all his family and friends; closed his eyes for the very last time.

  • Eric Jorgenson

    Here Goes. Never posted any of my writing anywhere before…

    “Grandpa and the Batmobile”

    I was sitting in the back seat of our Honda Accord on the drive out to my grandparents house. This was the early nineties, so the inside of the car was a dark brown, just like the chesterfield at home, the basement at my Nana and Papas, and pretty much anything we hadn’t bout in the last two years. 
    Out the window I could see the rolling hills and trees of the Canadian shield, with the occasional break showing the vast expanse of Lake Superior. Growing up in Thunder Bay you come to think everyone has a giant lake nearby, turns out I was just a lucky kid. There’s one part of the drive that is fantastic for a five year old kid in 1992. You pass the golf course and make a corner onto the road to Grandma and Grandpa’s. There’s trees hanging over the whole thing, and you can’t see any houses or anything. Its just like in Batman when he’s racing to the Batcave with Vicki Vale. I know the Accord doesn’t have a flaming exhaust or guns or anything, but its still cool. I can’t wait for it on the way home, because then its darker out, just like in the movie.
    The view out my window changes as we hit gravel road. We pass the stables, there’s just one horse out today, we go over the train tracks, no trains today or any day in the last five years, and pass the bank of military green mailboxes. In my mind this means two driveways and we’re at my Grandparents house, which is reason enough to get excited, for my Mom, it means her parents house, and for Dad it means a second home. Speaking of Batman, their house is big, two stories, a giant staircase in the front hall, chandeliers, dining room and huge concrete basement, two garages, this is my Wayne Manor, its very cool.
    As we pull into the driveway we suddenly stop, I realize it’s because Grandpa is out on his riding lawnmower, and is waiting near the end of the driveway, having figured we’d be arriving shortly. I roll down my window yelling Hi Grandpa, so he can hear me over the mower. He yells back that he’s just got to empty the grass bin and he’s heading back to the house, the tail end is the best part. “Chum why don’t you come with me and drive it back to the house?”. I’m unbuckled and out the car door before I can even say yes.
    At the age of five this is a pretty big deal. I’ve been an older brother for eight months, and now I get to drive the riding lawnmower. Life can’t get much better than that I figure.Grandpa drives over to the ditch with me on his lap, and backs it up so we (He) can empty the big grass bins on the back. Once that’s done, I know it’s my time to shine. Up we hop into the seat of the lawnmower, and its my turn to drive. Being five you may imagine that driving may not be quite the most accurate description of my steering, and yelling Faster or Slower to control Grandpa’s foot. This was a great ride, mostly because the lawn we need to cross is huge which means a lengthy ride. We hit the parking area, and its time for finesse. We need to back the lawnmower into the garage, because it has to be facing the right way for when it comes out next time. Grandpa helps me steer this part telling me Left or Right, while I watch the concrete pull awawy in front of us as we back into the garage. We stop, and I hop off.
    I tell Grandpa as we hop off the lawnmower he really needs a batcave car spinner thing. “Oh do I?”, he asks while smiling at me, then reaches up and pulls the garage door shut. I tell him it would save him so much time, because he could pull in forwards at full speed, and it does the turning for you. He says he’ll look into it. I tell him I’ll watch for anything else he needs after seeing Batman Returns tomorrow with Mom. He says he can’t wait to find out what else he’ll need.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=577106571 Thuy Yau

      Good on you for posting, Eric. I know how hard it is to put your work up for show; this is only my second time here :)

      I really liked the way you wrote, I really felt like I was there. Keep it up!

  • http://www.facebook.com/yvette.carol Yvette Carol

    Grandpa didn’t give hugs, he preferred a handshake. No limp handshakes, mind. For in grandpa’s eyes, character could be revealed in a handshake; everything you needed to know about a man, woman, or a child could be found in the way they took your hand. A limp or wet handshake showed a lack of spirit. That’s what grandpa said.

    He stood tall and straight-backed, the same weight he was proud of saying, that he was when he was 16. Although I’m fairly sure 16 year olds don’t wear all their weight around their belly. But then I didn’t have the heart to say anything. Grandpa falls asleep so often it doesn’t do to waste the precious moments he is awake. 

  • http://goinswriter.com/ Jeff Goins

    Here’s mine: http://goinswriter.com/best-writer/

  • Isabelle146

    I don’t think that I really knew my grandfather. We never really talked. That wasn’t for any feuding reason but because he was a ‘quiet’ man. He didn’t seem to do very much. But, he wasn’t fat. In fact, despite the permanent cigarette smoldering in his mouth he was lean and seemed fit.  Judging by my family photographs he had always been a good looking man and he remained so. He saw action as a submariner in the second world war, clearly brave then, but I wouldn’t say the strong and silent type in fact he was a gentle, man. I confronted him once about mold on the top of a jar of marmalade in a kitchen cupboard I was clearing out for him. He just looked at me, he didn’t reply but what I could see was ‘patience’. Quiet, gentle and patient. I didn’t really know him or anything about him or ask him any questions because I didn’t need to. I knew he loved me and me him.

  • Marla4

    By the time I was born one of my grandfathers was long in the
    ground, and the other one was likely in a bar, if my mother was right, bellied
    up to the juke box singing along with Glen Campbell, a country star from
    Arkansas he claimed a spotty connection to.

    “Something about the railroad,” my mother said when I
    pressed her.

    So I knew little of him, this man named Lonzo Willett, who left
    my grandmother when my mother was five, and sometimes appeared near her school
    bus stop early in the morning, already smelling of whiskey.

    “I hated him,” my mother said, as flat as if she was reading
    a grocery list.

    My other grandfather, the good one, was named Ollie Jollie
    Cleveland Cantrell, and raised a passel of kids and married three times.  On his headstone, the one he shares with his
    first wife – my father’s mother  - are
    these words.  “Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in
    passing;
    Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness.” 

    The Longfellow lines are at odds with the other sentiments
    in this country cemetery.  There is a
    field of sayings.  “Jesus Needed Her More
    Than Me.”  “I’ll Meet You On The
    Beautiful Shore.” “In The Arms Of The Savior.” 
    A whole lot of Jesus, and very little poetry.

    I say this to my father, who answers.  “Who’s Longfellow?”

    I grow up grandfatherless, unless you count my mother’s
    mother’s latest husband, a man named Cliff who is three months younger than my
    own father, and doesn’t work.

    “He makes me happy,” my grandmother says, and my mother
    storms off, but only a quarter of a mile, because that’s where our house sits.

    My life is overshadowed by women. My mother. Her mother. My
    Aunt Laura who shows up every time Uncle Merritt is drinking.  Which is every weekend and all the holidays
    you get paid for.

    My father works long hours and is quiet.  Once, when I’m getting ready for cheerleading
    practice he follows me outside.  He’s
    hidden cigarettes in his toolbox – my mother won’t allow smoking – that he
    keeps in what he calls the car porch, a term that is a remnant of an older
    time.

    As he’s lighting the cigarette, he starts telling me about growing
    up, how he ran every morning, how his legs ached, how he did it because he
    wanted to be a fighter, but he was too small, he says.

    “And then I met your mother.”

    I look like him, so pale the lady at the cosmetics counter
    sells me concealer as foundation.  My
    mother is dark and fiery and puts her foot down.  I live in the corners of this house, in the
    dark spaces, trying to stay out of her way.

    “She needed a father,” my own father says when I tell him
    what life is like when he’s at work.

    “I need a father,” I say, and I look down at my feet.

    My father lets out a flag of smoke, and he looks at me for
    too long and I know I’ve crossed a line, I know I have because his hands make
    fists and he drops the cigarette and he brushes past me and he takes off, a
    slow trot and then a full-out run, and I watch him, my father who’s all sinew
    and ropey muscle, and he’s really going now, he’s geared up and as he passes my
    grandmother’s house he raises his fist to Cliff who’s draped across the hammock,
    and Prince, my grandmother’s German shepherd takes out after him but my father
    keeps on going, heading for the highway now, and the cars are slowing down but
    my father doesn’t seem to notice.  He
    just keeps going, his arms and legs pumping like his feet are on fire, right in
    line with the cars, and I watch from my place on the car porch until he
    disappears into the great beyond.
     

  • C. L. Wood

    Both of my grandfathers were strong male figures during my early childhood.  They were both dear to me but in different ways.  Although unalike they shared some similarities.  Both were from immigrant families.  Both married women from long established settler families.  Both endowed me with wonderful childhood memories.
    One was a teacher, a sophisticated man about town.  The other was from a sea-faring family.  He and his brothers became farmers in Australia.  Both grandfathers were kind, realistic, very much of their time when the women dealt with the children and the men maintained a mostly separate existence.

    I have memories of sitting on the steps with each of them, at different times and in different places.  I spent most of the school holidays at the house of my Danish grandfather.  The house was always full of children as most of the grandchildren holidayed with them and some even lived there full time.

    On a clear summer night we youngest children would sit on the wide front steps of the house while my grandfather guided us through the name of the stars and the galaxies and told us about the different night skies of the northern hemisphere.  He told us how sailing by the stars was complicated by seasonal variations, and by longitudinal differences.  They were wondrous stories:  a mix of myth and fact and anecdote.  Each moonless night when the stars were brightest we competed to be the one who remembered the names of the most stars, who could recall the particular story or stories associated with each one, how the stories from Aboriginal Australia were different from, yet sometimes had similarities to the stories from Scandinavia.

    I guess in reality he was just entertaining us while the women and older children washed up and prepared the house for our bedtime, but for us it was a magic time, and even today, on a clear moonless night I can name the stars and remember with intense clarity those nights on the steps with my grandfather.

    I lived the rest of the year with my other grandparents.  In that household I was the only child and spoiled beyond belief.  That grandfather was a school teacher, which was probably why my year was divided as it was between the two households.

    My school teacher grandfather would sit with me on the narrow back steps of our home between the school and a pine plantation.  Each Saturday and Sunday morning I read to him.  At first the words on the page were big and clear and curly.  I loved the serifs on the ‘a’s', the beautiful pattern of the words.  As time passed and I became a more skilled reader there were fewer pictures and more words.  The words decreased in size until, by the time I was reading ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ to him there was only an occasional pen drawing and the words were so tiny I used to be amazed at how many could fit on the page.

    He died when I was seven and I went back to living with my natural parents.  My life had changed but he had instilled a love of reading in me that has been with me, solace and pleasure, ever since.

    I continued to spend the school holidays with my Danish grandfather, but by the time I was nine I was considered old enough to help in the kitchen at night.  Another group of ‘littlies’ took our place on the front steps.  We began listening to the women’s stories behind the plates we were washing and drying and putting away.  We heard stories of who had bought what plate and where and why, who had given it as a present and where the giver was now.  sometimes a piece of crockery had a story from another country attached to it.  I was moving away from my grandfathers into a world of women’s stories.

    • Marla

      This is brilliant: stars and books and dishes. What a gifted writer you are. I used to watch the stars with my own father.

  • Mirelba

    My grandfather was a man of contrasts.  Frail and sickly as I remember him—attributed
    to his whispered experiences from two World Wars—he still stood tall, like the
    ex-veteran of the Austro-Hungarian army that he was.  Due to his taciturn nature, we know nothing about
    his pre-marriage experiences, other than the fact that his many years as a POW
    in Russia—further lengthened by the outbreak of the Communist Revolution—instilled
    in him a deep distrust of communism and a longing for the dream of democracy
    and opportunity that was America.  His
    father insisted that none of his children leave for America so long as he was
    alive, and so my grandfather was trapped with his wife and sons in yet another
    World War, which they survived only through the grace of God.

    I remember him as frail and sickly, and yet the picture
    seared most clearly in my mind, is the one of him standing tall, indomitable, invincible,
    rifle over his shoulder, a WWII partisan in the forests of Eastern Europe.  And yet he was such a small man.

    He was an upright and independent man whose home and pocket
    were open to those in need, but was himself unwilling to accept favors from
    others.  He paid his way and was careful
    to repay any favor at least four-fold.

    He was quietly devoted to my outgoing, fun-loving
    grandmother, his two sons, daughters-in-law and seven grandchildren.  My grandfather treated his wife and
    daughters-in-law and everyone he came into contact with, with a courtly
    respect.  All these years later and
    people I meet still speak of my grandfather with voices full of awe and
    respect, much the way I viewed him.

    When I was little, my older brother came home from school one
    day, all full of himself and his new knowledge. “Do you know what I learned
    today?”  Of course I didn’t, but he
    soon filled me in.   ”We learned
    that the Messiah will be a descendant of King David, born on Tisha B’Av (the
    day of mourning for the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem) and named
    Menachem.”  I could feel my eyes
    growing round as those of Winnie’s friend Owl. 
    According to our family tradition, my grandfather was descended from the
    House of David, and his name was Menachem. 
     Although his birthday was one
    month early, I was convinced that my dignified and learned grandfather was The
    One.  From that time onward, I always
    viewed him with tinted glasses, the lenses thoroughly coated with the greatest
    respect and awe.

    Every year before the fast of Yom Kippur, we would visit my grandfather
    to receive a blessing for the New Year. 
    He would gather his strength to rise from his day bed to stand, gently
    cupping our heads with his frail hands letting them rest lightly there as he
    blessed us for the New Year with the ancient words with which his father and
    grandfather had blessed him and been blessed throughout the generations.  The experience had far greater significance
    for me after my brother’s ‘revelation’, so much so that all these years later,
    as Yom Kippur approaches I can close my eyes and capture the moment that I was
    blessed by an almost Messiah.

     

     

    • Mariaanne

      That was amazing Mirelba.  He sounds wonderful and I like how you remember him in his prime rather than frail and sickly.  I love the idea of receiving a “blessing” once  year from a patriarch.  Most of all though I love that last part where you receive a blessing from an “almost messiah”.  There is so much in love and life in this piece.  It’s wonderful. 

      • Mirelba

         Thanks!  I actually never knew him in his prime, but that picture of him was in our family album for years and is simply memorable.  And yup, the tradition continues:  my father of blessed memory and my fil blessed our kids every year, and now dh blesses our grandchildren too.

    • Marla

      I love the phrase “almost Messiah”. So beautiful.

      • Mirelba

        Thank you, Marla.

    • Ernest

      love it. 

      the fact that you get to read and understand so many different aspects and stories of the same figure (a grandfather) in a single page of a blog is amazing!!

      • Mirelba

        Definitely. Very interesting to see all these tributes to our different grandfathers.

    • C. L. Wood

       this is a lovely story and homage to a grandfather whose influence on the family must have been tremendous.

      • Mirelba

        Thank you. And very true, despite his being so quiet, he still had a strong influence on us all.

  • http://pearlz.wordpress.com/ June Perkins

    I was inspired by this prompt..

    You can read my full response here
    http://wp.me/pVzr-12P

    Here is just an extract..

    After this visit, letters flowed from my grandmum and she would tell
    me how granddad was.  They were always decorated with pictures made from
    leaves and plants.  And when I was fourteen years old, after years of
    letters and birthday cards with one or two dollars in them, I went to
    New Zealand with my Dad and spent a couple of weeks with my
    grandparents.

    My memories of my granddad then are much stronger. 
    He wore a plaid hat, and took us to see a Maori lady who he learnt the
    language from. She took us to a Maori meeting house.  This was my first
    trip away from Australia since moving there as a baby.  I am not sure
    why I was the chosen grandchild to visit.  Perhaps it was because I
    wrote back to every letter from my grandmother and became the voice of
    my family to them.
    Granddad loved his pet dogs and his garden. 
    Sometimes my grandmum would send me pictures of him with the dogs or
    busy at work in his beloved garden.  I enjoyed being in New Zealand
    meeting with them.  We went to the beach house and walked along the sand
    with their racing dogs and one of my uncles who lived with them.
    I
    noticed them gently chiding my Dad and that Granddad liked to make wine
    (my Dad doesn’t drink) and they asked my Dad if he would try some, to
    which he politely said ‘no.’ I wrote postcards home.

    My
    grandparents know how much I liked to write, and they gave me a very
    special present after this New Zealand trip.  It was a red typewriter to
    write books one day.When I went home I began to type letters to them,
    and send them poetry.  The next time I saw my grandad, he looked over
    some of my poetry  that I excitedly grabbed from my room to show him,
    and said I had real talent. I was filled with so much happiness after
    that comment and it added to my determination to be a writer.

  • CareyWriter

    My grandfather, David, grew up in the last fifteen years of
    his life. 

     

    He was born and raised in a very narrow, harshly religious
    (Protestant) family in a small town in Oklahoma.  Gender roles were very rigid, and Grandpa
    David tried to do right by his heritage and family and live the emotionally
    disconnected life of a Good Provider.  He
    got a trade (linotype operator), married a good woman, moved to an exciting
    city to start his own company, and fathered three children, whom he ignored
    except for the occasional lecture.

     

    When he was 70, his wife’s dementia could no longer be
    ignored.  She no longer kept house or
    even herself.  She rambled, verbally and
    physically.  He had to keep the house and
    a close eye on her.  And then the family
    business, which had been sold to his two sons, collapsed and the sons
    decamped.  His daughter moved in with her
    husband and two sons, but not to take care of her parents.  She took care of the business, and my
    grandfather became a housewife, assuming all household chores, including
    cooking, and managing his demented spouse and two seemingly demented
    toddlers.  Eventually he had to
    institutionalize my grandmother, and then he juggled two types of homes.

     

    Despite my aunt’s best efforts, the business could not be
    saved and came to a humiliating end, being sold for parts to pay the IRS.  The house was lost.  My grandmother died.  My aunt decamped back to Colorado, leaving my
    grandfather adrift and bereft.

     

    Which is when my uncle announced that he was gay, had AIDS,
    and was dying.  My grandfather set up
    (small) house with his son.  He struggled
    to reconcile his strict religious upbringing with the facts staring him
    straight in the face.  He decided to
    adopt a hate-the-sin, love-the-sinner approach. 
    But the love he felt for his sinning son and all his charming friends
    soon completely overwhelmed even this fragile defense.

     

    He didn’t feel like this was an accomplishment, though.  “How could I live so long and know so
    little,” he nearly sobbed to me.  His
    entire world was upended, and all he felt was disoriented.  I hope my protestations of pride and
    admiration made a dent in his despair.  I
    know he held his head high at my uncle’s funeral and accepted the sincere
    condolences of my uncles many gay friends with heartfelt grace.

     

    Three months after his son’s death, my grandfather felt a
    sharp pain in his head, the worst he ever felt. 
    When the cancer diagnosis followed, he dissolved into fear.  All the religious demons of his childhood
    started screaming through his brain.  “I
    have been a bad Christian,” he whispered to me in horror.  “I am going to hell, and I will never see you
    again.”  He could not be comforted.  He sought treatment after treatment to
    postpone the inevitable, but he lasted only nine months.  Nearly a year to the day after his son’s
    death, at age 85, he was laid to rest in the same cemetery.

     

    I am certain he rests in glory.  The end of his life was one he could never
    have imagined.  He saw it as only chaos
    and himself whipped helplessly around in the maelstrom.  But the grandfather who finally left this
    world was a much warmer and fuller human being than the stiff guy who raised my
    father and presided over the sterile Thanksgiving dinners of my childhood.  Rest in PEACE, Grandfather David.  You gave it, and you earned it.
     

    • Mirelba

       Wow, all these warm family tributes.  Beautiful!

    • C. L. Wood

       this is a wonderful story, and left me teary-eyed.  You have captured the complications and vicissitudes of family life from just one perspective very well. 

  • Iridescentsuns

    My grandfather died when I was three years old. The memories I have of him are few, but cherished. I used to recall a lot more, however, in time, my moments with him faded away, just like an old painting. Sometimes, when it’s really cold outside and I get cozy with a cup of orange tea, I return to the winter of my third year. 

    It’s Christmas. I’m in my bed, wrapped in covers while grandpa is sitting at the table peeling an orange for me. I gulp the small bits of the fruit, as he hands them to me, and, after I’m done with all of them, I press my hands to my face, trying to hold on to the sweet-soury smell. He looks at with such a serene face, then he caresses my forehead and starts laughing. 

    The sight of me, sticking my little fingers in front of my nose was probably quite funny. If only I could remember the sound of his laughter. I can still recall the look on his face, but just as a part of a mute film. A film that smells like orange.  

  • emd04

    When I was a kid, my grandpa used to play “guess the instrument” with me and my little brother. After dinner, he’d tune up the stereo, which had some orchestral recording on it, and we’d begin to listen. Every few minutes–usually when there was a solo piece–he’d ask us what instrument it was. 

    Most of the time, we got it right, amazing given that some of our answers were pure guesses. I remember once I said “French horn,” and got it right. My grandpa was impressed, but I was impressed I’d managed to pull that instrument, which I’d never heard before, out of thin air.

    Music was what we did, on my mom’s side of the family. Grandpa was a music teacher and a trumpeter, who played at receptions and other events around Pittsburgh to supplement his music teacher’s salary. Grandma was a crack piano player, and all of the kids–all eight of them–played at least one instrument. My mom played the flute, like a lot of her sisters.  My brother inherited my grandpa’s trumpet. I was a clarinetist, until I realized I didn’t want to do marching band in high school, and then I switched to voice, which was my true love anyway. My grandparents sang in their church choir, as well, so I continued the family tradition of alto power. 

    Grandpa–we called him “Pa”–never learned to play the piano properly. I never did either. But he had perfect pitch and tuned pianos beautifully, with care and attention, as a good tuner should. He would look at some of my musical theater scores, with their crazy key signatures–all sharps and all flats–and say, “what kind of key signature is that?!” Looking at my honors band music one year, he said, “too much black”–meaning, too many fast notes on the page. He wrote music for elementary and middle school bands, so there wasn’t too much black on those pages, and probably never sixteenth or thirty-second notes. (NEVER sixty-forth notes. Never.) 

    Besides the music, he had an imitable sense of humor, especially when it involved wordplay. He loved jokes and  puns. The only ride he would ride at Kennywood, the local amusement part, was the Restaurant; Eat ‘n Park was “Peak and Art”; “The Price is Right” was “The Price is Wrong.” He was also a talented artist, which he passed down to my brother, not me. I can’t draw at all. 

    He had eight kids, and 25 grandkids, when he died a few years ago. He worried a LOT about out safety. In the basement was a set of bunk beds, which me and my younger cousins loved to play on and around–sliding off the top bunk and leaping back on to it was a favorite game. He would freak out if he caught us doing this. But we knew, even as little kids, he wasn’t trying to be a killjoy. He just didn’t want us bashing our heads in. So often my cousin Diane and I would just play with our Barbies on the top bunk, and eschew any leaping off of it. 

    At holiday celebrations, he was the benevolent Emperor–carving the turkey with panache, being Santa Claus at the annual gift exchange (complete with Santa hat), passing out chocolates on Easter. My uncles take turns doing this now, but it’s not the same.

    He jingled when he walked, because he kept tic-tacs in his pockets, usually orange ones. As a kid, I would beg him to give me some, and he usually complied. 

    I think I probably got some, or most, of my acting ability from him. He did womnderful character voices and had the best facial expressions. He was an expert in getting a laugh. He could be serious when talking about church or politics, but around kids, he was a merry prankster, sort of Shakespearian in his personality (think of Shakespeare’s funny characters, not the tragic heroes. Pa was many things, but not tragic.)  Anger ignited around football season; watching the Steelers or Notre Dame foul up a game led to many bad words. He went with me and my dad to my first Penguin game, and eventually we got him on the hockey bandwagon. Baseball, too, was a love, even though the Pirates had been letting him down fairly regularly in the past few years.

    His hair was dark, but whitened with age, but he never lost it. The babies loved to play with it. He always dressed well, in neatly pressed and hemmed slacks, a long-sleeved shirt or polo, and in the winter a sweater or a sweater vest. 

    He and my grandma were incredibly supportive, coming to concerts, recitals, talent shows, and my theater performances. They loved music in almost all forms (forget the rock and rap and all that), so they, unlike my brother and my dad, loved sitting through Verdi’s Requiem, or a long choir concert, just as much as attending a band concert. With so many grandkids scattered through several states, it was amazing they were such a big part of our lives. They never missed graduation parties, sacraments, or, even, my college concerts. 

    I feel bad that my youngest cousin will never remember him like I do, but I know how lucky I am to have had him for 28 years. He influences my life in more ways than I can count. 

    • C. L. Wood

       An insightful memoir.  I particularly liked “(NEVER sixty-forth notes.  Never.)” 

  • Iridescentsuns

    My grandfather died when I was three years old. The memories I have of him are few, but cherished. I used to recall a lot more, however, in time, my moments with him faded away, just like an old painting. Sometimes, when it’s really cold outside and I get cozy with a cup of orange tea, I return to the winter of my third year. 

    It’s Christmas. I’m in my bed, wrapped in covers while grandpa is sitting at the table peeling an orange for me. I gulp the small bits of the fruit, as he hands them to me.  After I’m done with all of them, I press my hands to my face, trying to hold on to the sweet-soury smell. He looks at me with such a serene face, then he caresses my forehead and starts laughing. 

    The sight of me, sticking my little fingers in front of my nose was probably quite funny. If only I could remember the sound of his laughter. I can still recall the look on his face, but just as a part of a mute film. A film that smells like orange.  

    • http://KatieAxelson.com/ Katie Axelson

      This is great! I can’t imagine a better sound to remember someone by than his laughter.

    • Ernest

      incredible!

    • C. L. Wood

       I like how you have tied the drink of orange tea to the memory of the smell of orange at that particular place and time.  Well done.

  • http://twitter.com/beinglizbreen Liz Breen

    “She’ll be okay,” the old man said, not taking his eyes off
    the road. Lucas noted that his grandfather’s voice sounded less than
    convincing, but he was too tired to linger on it.

    “Yeah. I know,” Lucas replied.

    Lucas stared at his grandfather for a moment. Steady behind
    the wheel, hands distinctly positioned at 10 and 2. In his grandfather’s deep
    brown eyes, Lucas could see his own. And his mother’s. His grandfather turned,
    feeling Lucas’s gaze. Lucas quickly averted his eyes and blushed.

    “I know, you haven’t seen me in a while,” the man remarked.
    Lucas just shrugged, but in fact, that moment felt like the first time he had
    ever really looked at his grandfather. “I really meant to visit earlier. Your
    mom also told me you two might come down to Florida so… I guess I’m just saying
    I wish I could’ve seen you under different circumstances.”

    Lucas opened his mouth to say something, but no words came
    out. He resolved to counting the rapidly passing streetlights. 1, 2, 3, 4… 35,
    36, 37…. His grandfather’s firm hand on the back of his neck snapped him out of
    his trance. It was rough and certainly the largest hand he had ever felt.  His grandfather flashed him a tired
    smile. Lucas returned the gesture.

    They pulled into the driveway. The house was dark. Lucas led
    the way up the sidewalk, fumbling for the key in his pocket. The sound of lock
    turning echoed throughout the empty hallways, causing Lucas to shudder The two
    took off their shoes, an homage to their missing family member, and exchanged
    side glances as if to say, “What now?”

    It was the old man who spoke first. “You hungry?” The boy
    nodded. He was starving. “Good because I make a mean grilled cheese. Want to
    help?”

    They made their way into the kitchen and silently rummaged
    through drawers, assembling pans, bread, cheese. They stood side by side,
    leaned against the counter almost identically, listening to the butter crackle
    and buckle under the heat of the stove.

    “Hey, Gramps?”

    “Yeah, bud?”

    “If Mom dies—“

    “She won’t!” his grandfather replied unflinchingly.

    “I know. But if she does, can you stay?”

    His grandfather’s large, coarse hand clapping down on his
    shoulder was the only answer Lucas needed. 

  • http://twitter.com/beinglizbreen Liz Breen

    “She’ll be okay,” the old man said, not taking his eyes off
    the road. Lucas noted that his grandfather’s voice sounded less than
    convincing, but he was too tired to linger on it.

     

    “Yeah. I know,” Lucas replied.

     

    Lucas stared at his grandfather for a moment — steady behind
    the wheel, hands distinctly positioned at 10 and 2. In his grandfather’s deep
    brown eyes, Lucas could see his own. And his mother’s. His grandfather turned,
    feeling Lucas’s gaze. Lucas quickly averted his eyes and blushed.

     

    “I know, you haven’t seen me in a while,” the man remarked.
    Lucas just shrugged, but in fact, that moment felt like the first time he had
    ever really looked at his grandfather. “I really meant to visit earlier. Your
    mom also told me you two might come down to Florida so… I guess I’m just saying
    I wish I could’ve seen you under different circumstances.”

     

    Lucas opened his mouth to say something, but no words came
    out. He resolved to counting the rapidly passing streetlights. 1, 2, 3, 4… 35,
    36, 37…. His grandfather’s firm hand on the back of his neck snapped him out of
    his trance. It was rough and certainly the largest hand he had ever felt.  His grandfather flashed him a tired
    smile. Lucas returned the gesture.

     

    They pulled into the driveway. The house was dark. Lucas led
    the way up the sidewalk, fumbling for the key in his pocket. The sound of lock
    turning echoed throughout the empty hallways, causing Lucas to shudder. The two
    took off their shoes, an homage to the absent family member, and exchanged
    side glances as if to say, “What now?”

     

    It was the old man who spoke first. “You hungry?” The boy
    nodded. He was starving. “Good because I make a mean grilled cheese. Want to
    help?’

     

    They made their way into the kitchen and silently rummaged
    through drawers, assembling pans, bread, cheese. They stood side-by-side,
    leaned against the counter almost identically, listening to the butter crackle
    and buckle under the heat of the stove.

     

    “Hey, Gramps?”

     

    “Yeah, bud?”

     

    “If Mom dies—“

     

    “She won’t!” his grandfather replied unflinchingly.

     

    “I know. But if she does, can you stay?”

    His grandfather’s large, coarse hand providing a firm squeeze on his
    shoulder was the only answer Lucas needed. 

    • Mirelba

       Nice story!  Hope his mom makes it…

  • Ernest

    Much like the many pious men that dot the earth, my grandfather was ever wiling to spread the ideals of his religion among his fellow men. He spent most of his adult life toiling hard to provide a better future for my father, and he as puts it, God was with him at every corner; be it the worst of eventualities or the best of breakthroughs. Throughout the years, a rosary has been his constant companion on which he chants His name indefinitely. When the time came he tried teaching me his ideals. But I, like any modern man, scoffed at such foolishness and blind beliefs. I never meant to disrespect him but he was so attached to his God that any insult to Him was one hurled at him. As time flew my life went on and he became one of many relatives who you meet just once a year and barely ever talk to. 

    He left to live with his God many years ago. I was at his funeral and it was there that I stated contemplating on the things he tried to teach me as a child. It didn’t take long for the profound depth and eternal beauty of his lessons to sink in. Looking at me now you would notice my right hand always comfortably tucked into my right hand trouser pocket counting the beads of the rosary, one which belonged to my grandfather. In the most stressful situations I slide my hand into my pocket and chant His name in my mind, with the treasured memory of my grandpa sitting on a chair besides the fire, rosary in hand and a placid yet mysterious smile on his face.

    • http://twitter.com/pootlesuzie Suzie Gallagher

      Ernest, I like it, my husband is Catholic and my kids all have rosary beads. Isn’t it amazing how a funeral of a person can bring faith of many to the fore

      • Ernest

        absolutely… funerals have some kind of indescribable yet powerful energy, i guess…

        thanks a lot for reading!!!

    • http://www.facebook.com/zoe.dyer Zoe Beech

      I love the image of you with your hand in your pocket counting the beads of the rosary – beautifully mirrors your grandfather sitting by the fire, and says so much about what you learnt from him…

      • Ernest

        appreciate it. thanks for reading!!

    • Mirelba

       Beautiful tribute.  The second paragraph really flows well. I find that many times in these exercises, the first paragraph is hesitant, and then we find the flow and get into stride so that we end better than we begin.

      • Ernest

        I’ll try to work on that… thanks for the invaluable input !!

        • Mirelba

          Welcome, glad to help.

          • Ernest

            !!

  • http://twitter.com/pootlesuzie Suzie Gallagher

    Thank you all for your beautiful comments, this man is not real. One of my grandads kept stilton on his desk where he saw patients until the maggots came and then ate it in front of people for shock value. The other one was quiet, quietly out of the way of my grandma and quietly, softly having affairs around town.
    This piece though, I need your help, I am showing not telling, leaving chunks of ether for the reader to grasp and “get” the real meaning. Obviously I am doing it wrong because you all are calling him lovely. Am I too subtle, or just missing the mark completely? What am I doing wrong (this is not the first time that my subtext has been ignored) that the insidious nature of abusers is not seen but only the cheerful pretend self.

    “We loved with a passion” “we don’t speak ill of the dead in Ireland” “in the shed here no one would find us” “floating above images I didn’t understand”

    For example “my memoir” or my testimony reads – I met love when I was two years old.

    Personally I think this means I met a mighty unconditional love at two but before that there was no love, this opens it up for the listener to put their own take on it without me having to explain how I came to be in that position. Am I wrong? Have I lost the plot completely.

     

  • Puffy

    Whenever I hear people say that senior citizens don’t like using newfangled tech like laptops and cellphones, I can’t help but laugh.

    My grandfather likes to sit on the dusty lime green couch in his house’s living room, with his paperwork, iPhone, and a laptop spread all over the cushions. He never liked cleaning up, so often he would have to brush paper cups and candy wrappers and even cobwebs off the sofa in order to sit down and enjoy an episode of CSI Miami.

    Grandad is so kooky, he can be the main character of a Roald Dahl book.

    He likes wearing ties out of tinfoil, and his shoes are often either bright pink or in orange and white stripes. His glasses’ lens are star-shaped, and his iPhone is always jutting out of his pants pocket. He hates golf, chess, and other “old man sports,” as he calls them. (Isn’t it ironic that he’s 86?)

    During Christmas, a gift Grandad would like the most is something techy; a Samsung Galaxy Y, an iPad, a flat screen TV, or a set of fifteen rainbow-colored USB drives. He’ll use them to write his short stories (mostly about Twinkle Periwinkle, an elf girl he modeled after me), play Plants vs. Zombies with, or to download his favorite iCarly episodes.

    Grandad’s house is just as quirky as he is. Since Granmom is in Japan with Aunt Alberona, Grandad can do whatever he wants with it. He turned the stairs into a canary yellow slide! How does one get to the second floor, then? You pull out a piece of wood from the ceiling, and down will drop a rope ladder. My favorite part of the house, though, is the chandelier in Grandad’s room. It’s made of sparkly glass beads, with wooden figurines of Twinkle Periwinkle and her brothers Zap Zap and SushiBoy (modeled after my own brothers, of course) he carved hanging at the sides.

    What I love the most about Grandad, though, is he is unbelievably cheerful. When he heard that Granmom had to evacuate after the earthquake that hit Japan, he simply said, “Elissa was always a tough girl. That’s why my marriage ruined me :D. Let’s send Granmom some stay-happy cookies, and let’s draw her a card of Twinkle Periwinkle banishing the evil Mr. Earthquake, okay?”

  • fab_kate

    For me, Velcro straps represented predictability, security and warmth, things all children crave. In the mornings during  summers and on holidays, the rip of Velcro straps being pulled apart on Pappaw’s walking shoes tore the shroud of dreams I slept behind, exposing me to the realm of reality and wakefulness, but it wasn’t a harsh jolt. Instead, the noise let me know I’d woken up, at least for that day, to a world that was right, a world that loved me, and I could keep my eyes closed, burrow down into my pillows and blankets, and groggily let Pappaw’s morning routine lull me back to sleep.  
    Years before I was born, my mother encouraged Pappaw to start walking at the mall in the mornings to help rebuild the muscle in his heart following an emergency open-heart surgery that was prompted by a lifetime of inhaling two packs a day. Now I was a young girl, my mother was dead, but Pappaw’s mall-walking habit lived on, and without fail, I’d hear him from the front bedroom just off the den as he sat down on the fireplace hearth and strapped on his navy Velcro walking shoes he’d set out the night before.
    There’d be the stray morning that would come along when I’d get the impulse to join him and would pull myself out of bed, and we walked the mall together. Just like the routine with his Velcro shoes, he had a route laid out that he stuck to precisely, and we’d make that same loop three or four times. I always liked to see Pappaw’s good humor and friendliness as we passed other mall walkers. He’d see these same people day in, day out and they’d always exchange greetings and smiles and Pappaw was unflappable; I don’t remember him ever having a grumpy morning, and for that matter, I can’t recall a time when I ran an errands with him where he didn’t greet people around town with a laugh, a smile, a mischievous glint in his eye, always ready to unpack a story to anyone who would listen. When I’d call the house, he’d pull the phone off the wall in the kitchen, the one closest to his recliner and the only one that wasn’t updated to include Caller ID, and even though he didn’t know who was calling, he didn’t care.
    “Jake’s Mule Barn,” he’d say into the receiver, and I could hear the lopsided smile in his voice. “Jake speaking.” Then he’d unfurl a rich, rough laugh from deep into his belly into his throat, and when that was the person who thought I hung the moon, all I could ever feel around him was comfort and peace, and those were feelings that didn’t exist in my own home, so I clung to them forcefully and allowed Pappaw and Mimi’s unconditional love to carry me into adulthood without the hard, jagged edges that could have easily formed otherwise.
    Most mornings, I didn’t go with Pappaw to the mall. I stayed in bed and slept, and then I’d hear him come home and his routine would continue. He’d sit back down on the hearth, next to his cowboys boots he’d also set out the night before, unstrap the navy Velcros, and tug on his beloved boots. My entire life, Pappaw only wore two types of shoes: Velcro walking shoes and cowboy boots, and even though he’d spend most of his time in front of the TV, he’d always do it with boots on, and would even kick up the recliner in the afternoon and nap with his feet snugly wrapped in leather.
    After the footwear was taken care of, I’d hear the newspaper unfold and snap open, and then it was still and quiet again until Pappaw’s laugh broke the air when he came across the funnies or something that struck him the right way in one of the articles.
     Sometime during his newspaper read, I’d finally rouse myself and plod into the den.
    “Good morning, sweetheart,” he’d say as he lowered the paper. Then he’d fix us both breakfast. There wasn’t room for variation in this, either. He couldn’t eat gluten, so he would smear peanut butter onto a rice cake and take bites of that in between spoonfuls of Cheerios and banana slices dripping with milk. The only time in my life I ate rice cakes was with Pappaw, but of course I wanted to do what he was doing. He’d use a rice cake at lunch in place of sandwich bread. He’d lay bologna, mustard, and cheese from a cellophane wrapper atop the rice cake, call it a dog and cheese sandwich, and bite into it.
    Sometimes I would sit next to Pappaw and ask him to show me his arm. He’d roll his button-down shirt up to his tanned bicep, leathery from his years of work on a farm in Idalou, Texas, and he’d show me the soft canyon above his elbow where Japanese ammunition hit him in the Phillipines. As I touched the crater in his arm, my mind tried to open up wide enough to grasp the thought of my Pappaw not only being shot,  but  also shooting others. The bullet had struck Pappaw’s tendons and nerves and had permanently left his pinkie and ring finger curled up, numb and lifeless on his left hand. As I grew up I learned how he’s worked his way onto the Lubbock Fire Department despite his handicap, and had doubled with tractor work on his days off, and my admiration for him only grew.
    As I said goodbye to him in his casket when I was 21, I glanced down at his folded hands, and saw the folded fingers one last time, and I pressed my own hand to his as I silently told him all that he’d meant to my life.

  • SugarRos

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    My grandfather was a God in my eyes.

     

    There are certain ways that I saw adults when I was a
    kid.  To me, my grandfather was
    extremely God-like.  His face was
    tough and wrinkled and brown, like old leather, and I used to sit on his lap
    and run my finger across the creases in his forehead and cheeks.  He would smile down at me, and the
    absolute kindness would just radiate out of him.  He was handsome and tall, with soft eyes and peppered hair
    and giant ears that both me and my brother adopted from him.

     

    He was my favorite grandparent because he was quiet.  I never heard him yell or raise his
    voice, and his face was always the picture of serene.  He was a sharp, calming contrast to my grandmother who was
    always screaming about something or other.  But the thing that I remember the most about him, the thing
    that stick out clearest in my mind is the smell of Marlboro cigarettes.  My parents didn’t smoke, and they made
    sure I was never around it, and I only saw grandpa with a cigarette a couple of
    times, but that smell clung to him like cologne.

     

    I loved that smell.

     

    He had this chair, this certain chair that sat in the corner
    of the family room that he always sat in. 
    That was his chair – grandpa’s chair, and it was big and soft and
    smelled just like him.  I used to
    climb up into his lap and curl up next to him and inhale the lovely scent of Marlboros.  The smell was calming to me.  I fell asleep there in his lap, in that
    chair more times than I can possibly remember.

     

    The thing about my family is that we’re not very close.  I lived very far away from my
    grandparents from the time I was ten until I turned 26, and by then my grandpa
    was long gone.  When I finally
    moved back and I stepped inside my grandmothers house, which hadn’t changed in
    all those years, I nearly cried. 
    My grandpas’ chair was right where it had always been.  It hadn’t moved.  When I walked over to sit down and I
    breathed in, that smell was still there, keeping him alive in my memories….

     

  • Diana Trautwein

    If you want to glimpse the soul of a man, watch how he interacts with his grandchildren. 

    I had a grandfather who delighted in terrifying his grandkids, removing his dentures and chasing us around the yard, making them go clickety-clack in his hand while grinning at us with his gums. 

    He had little use for children, even though he and my grandmother owned and operated two nursery schools. Grampa had a troubled childhood, a wandering young adulthood, marrying my grandmother when he was 30 and she was 18. 

    They had four children in four years, traveled by train from British Columbia to Los Angeles and squeaked out a living, even managing to save money, one dime at a time. 

    But then, he would get the itch, grab all the money in the kitty and invest it in margin calls for very tenuous stocks. This was in the 1920′s and 30′s and when the inevitable happened, and the family lost everything, he would drown his sorrows in alcohol, staggering home and getting sick all over the kitchen floor.My mother was the designated clean-up crew, from the age of six until she married at age 20. Grampa’s soul was dark and difficult.My father’s father was aloof, highly intelligent and prone to long depressive episodes. But Pa also kept a stash of lemon drops in his vest pocket and whenever we visited, he would hand them out to my brother and me. There was a twinkle in his eye that intrigued me and I was sad when he died of throat cancer when I was six. Pa’s soul was troubled but had a twinkle of light.My father was intrigued by his grandchildren, enjoying their unique personalities and often playing games and watching quirky television shows with them. He was a quiet man, intellectual, musical and underneath it all, funny as hell. He encouraged each of his five grandkids to become all the good things that he saw in them, just as he had his children. And he was a great – although quiet – cheerleader. Poppa’s soul was rich and deep and full of surprises.My husband is the best grandfather I have ever known. He gets down on the floor with the littlest, playing tea party, legos, doctor and dress-up. He reads aloud, engages in make-believe and endures Monopoly marathons with the older ones. His entire being springs into life when we are together as a family. And he knows what is going on in the life of each one of our eight. His soul is happy, healthy and filled with light. Just ask our grandkids.

  • fab_kate

    For me, Velcro straps represented predictability, security and warmth, things all children crave. In the mornings during  summers and on holidays, the rip of Velcro straps being pulled apart on Pappaw’s walking shoes tore the shroud of dreams I slept behind, exposing me to the realm of reality and wakefulness, but it wasn’t a harsh jolt. Instead, the noise let me know I’d woken up, at least for that day, to a world that was right, a world that loved me, and I could keep my eyes closed, burrow down into my pillows and blankets, and groggily let Pappaw’s morning routine lull me back to sleep.  
    Years before I was born, my mother encouraged Pappaw to start walking at the mall in the mornings to help rebuild the muscle in his heart following an emergency open-heart surgery that was prompted by a lifetime of inhaling two packs a day. Now I was a young girl, my mother was dead, but Pappaw’s mall-walking habit lived on, and without fail, I’d hear him from the front bedroom just off the den as he sat down on the fireplace hearth and strapped on his navy Velcro walking shoes he’d set out the night before.
    There’d be the stray morning that would come along when I’d get the impulse to join him and would pull myself out of bed, and we walked the mall together. Just like the routine with his Velcro shoes, he had a route laid out that he stuck to precisely, and we’d make that same loop three or four times. I always liked to see Pappaw’s good humor and friendliness as we passed other mall walkers. He’d see these same people day in, day out and they’d always exchange greetings and smiles and Pappaw was unflappable; I don’t remember him ever having a grumpy morning, and for that matter, I can’t recall a time when I ran an errands with him where he didn’t greet people around town with a laugh, a smile, a mischievous glint in his eye, always ready to unpack a story to anyone who would listen. When I’d call the house, he’d pull the phone off the wall in the kitchen, the one closest to his recliner and the only one that wasn’t updated to include Caller ID, and even though he didn’t know who was calling, he didn’t care.
    “Jake’s Mule Barn,” he’d say into the receiver, and I could hear the lopsided smile in his voice. “Jake speaking.” Then he’d unfurl a rich, rough laugh from deep into his belly into his throat, and when that was the person who thought I hung the moon, all I could ever feel around him was comfort and peace, and those were feelings that didn’t exist in my own home, so I clung to them forcefully and allowed Pappaw and Mimi’s unconditional love to carry me into adulthood without the hard, jagged edges that could have easily formed otherwise.
    Most mornings, I didn’t go with Pappaw to the mall. I stayed in bed and slept, and then I’d hear him come home and his routine would continue. He’d sit back down on the hearth, next to his cowboys boots he’d also set out the night before. My entire life, Pappaw only wore two types of shoes: Velcro walking shoes and cowboy boots, and even though he’d spend most of his time in front of the TV, he’d always do it with boots on, and would even kick up the recliner in the afternoon and nap with his feet snugly wrapped in leather.
    After the footwear was taken care of, I’d hear the newspaper unfold and snap open, and then it was still and quiet again until Pappaw’s laugh broke the air when he came across the funnies or something that struck him the right way in one of the articles. He found human people to quite often be ridiculous, so it wasn’t unusual for something in one of the articles to make him chuckle incredulously at human behavior.
    Sometime during his newspaper read, I’d finally rouse myself and plod into the den.
    “Good morning, sweetheart,” he’d say as he lowered the paper. Then he’d fix us both breakfast. There wasn’t room for variation in this, either. He couldn’t eat gluten, so he would smear peanut butter onto a rice cake and take bites of that in between spoonfuls of Cheerios and banana slices dripping with milk. The only time in my life I ate rice cakes was with Pappaw, but of course I wanted to do what he was doing. He’d use a rice cake at lunch in place of sandwich bread. He’d lay bologna, mustard, and cheese from a cellophane wrapper atop the rice cake, call it a dog and cheese sandwich, and bite into it.

  • http://KatieAxelson.com/ Katie Axelson

    Grandpa and I sat on the patio chatting while Farmer Uncle cooked burgers. Grandma came out the back door with two drinks in her hand. We’ve learned the hard way that Grandma is not supposed to be the drink mix-er in their relationship.

    She set the two martini’s down on the glass-top table as Grandpa challenged her to chase the goose.

    Grandma shrugged, apparently one martini down, and approached the queen of the roost, Peepers the goose.

    Peepers honked but refused to move as Grandma ran at her.

    Within a few feet of the immobile goose, Grandma paused. She turned around and ran back towards Grandpa.

    Peepers too ran towards Grandpa.

    Grandma chases Peepers. Peepers chases Grandma.

    Armed with grill tongs, Farmer Uncle took over, put Peepers in her place, and rescued Grandma. Peepers moped away, Grandma slammed her second martini, and Farmer Uncle returned to his role as Chef.

    Grandpa and I rolled.

    • Mariaanne

      What a family, drinking martinis and chasing a goose named Peepers.  I love it. 
       

      • http://KatieAxelson.com/ Katie Axelson

        All true.

    • Ernest

      beautiful!! :->

      • http://KatieAxelson.com/ Katie Axelson

        Thanks, Ernest!

  • Bjhousewriter

    I know very little of my grandfather. What I know about him is he always seemso stern and struck. He was at least six feet tall. Every time he would hold me as a young child I would always cry. I was afraid of him.

    I think that all of his children and their families would do is gather around the big dinning room table. I remember that at Christmas time before we could open our presents we had to eat our dinner first. Then the dishes had to be done.

    One other memory I had of my grandfather was him sitting in his favorite chair in the living room with his deer head hanging on the wall above his. Next to him was the little spit tune container sitting on the floor. Soon we would see him spit out his tobacco.

  • Sheila Good

    Papa Vet would meet us very Sunday on the front porch. His hands in his overhauls, dirty and dusty from the cornfields he’d been plowing. His old felt hat shading his eyes from the sun. His skin dark and weathered. I have idea how papa was. He always looked ancient to me. But, he every Sunday me met us on the porch and handed me and my sisters a silver dollar. “Don’t spend all in one place he’d say.” He knew full well, our daddy would stop at the state line store on the home and we’d spend every dine on candy or some small what-not. 

    We spent Sunday’s at Grandpa’s running through files of corn, playing in the hen house, when I didn’t get caught, riding behind the tractor through the apple orchards or pestering him with questions as he followed slowly behind an old mule plowing. I still remember the water bucket and ladle that sat by the back porch and the handkerchief he pulled out of his pocket to wipe his brow before heading inside to the best Sunday dinner ever. He was a soft spoken gentle, hard working man. 

  • http://lcroberts.posterous.com/ Lisa Roberts

    Even with his pants worn up halfway over his belly and navel, my grandfather was a distinguished looking fellow.  One of my favorite pictures of he and my grandmother looks like a print from a movie set back in the 1950’s.  My grandmother is sitting on his lap in a black dress, the kind I remember Lucille Ball wearing on I Love Lucy,  beautifully tailored with an elaborate white ruffle that framed her face.  Her arm is around my grandfather, her mouth open as she smiles and gazes into my grandfathers eyes.  He is smiling back at her, his commanding profile showing off a beautifully sculpted Roman nose and one dark smoldering eye.  His elbow rests upon the arm of the sofa chair and in his hand is a burning cigarette much like the silhouette in the advertisement for my favorite show, Mad Men.

    The picture provides my only evidence of my grandfather’s smoking habit which he kicked when I was very young.  The memories I have of him are of a cheerful and gentle old man.  Not to say he didn’t have his fiery moments.  As a first generation Italian immigrant he had a conservative and unyielding opinion on just about everything and he was never shy about sharing them.  Flashes of passion or anger in the heat of a debate were the worst I ever saw of him, although I’ve been told that he had a sometimes violent temper as a younger man.  It was impossible for me to envision, this man who spent Sunday nights on the sofa watching Lawrence Welk or agonizing for minutes over each and every play in gin rummy game.  In my childlike experience he was slow and painstakingly thoughtful.   

    I was very close to him and I respected him immensely.  Although I was only 18 when he passed away, I knew enough to know he had seen and experienced more than I could possibly conceive of in my short life.  I was in awe of him, his capacity for learning and his seemingly bottomless knowledge.  He read voraciously, going to the library each week to research subjects that interested him, making notes and keeping them in neat piles on his meticulously organized desk.  He exercised regularly, with walks to the library and swims in his pool.  Even in his 70’s he made efforts to maintain his health diluting a glass of wine with water, for instance.  He was as handsome at 70 as he was in that picture.  One of my favorite memories is of him gliding through the pool like a graceful whale, holding his breath for two or three laps before quietly emerging without even a gasp.  When we’d swim together, he’d sink down to the bottom allowing me to climb aboard his shoulders, covered in silver hair, and then, holding my hands, slowly stand up to let me dive off.  

    I could only imagine him as handsome and strong and vivacious and so I was wholly unprepared for his appearance during his last hospitalization after a stroke.  His body was bloated and his pale face drooped, his mouth unable to form clear sentences.  Although he had moments of lucidity, he could not feed himself.  That week, I spent every day visiting with him, chatting and playing Benny Goodman big band classics to keep him company.  One afternoon I was there when his dinner came.  I realized I would need to feed him as his arms would not cooperate.  The small hospital spoon could barely hold more than a few drops of broth and he soon became frustrated with the soup dribbling down his face.  Seeing him struggle made me angry.  Though I couldn’t fix his heart or his arteries, there was one thing I could do.  I decided to run to Cost Plus to see about buying a Chinese style soup spoon.  I figured that would be a perfect solution and I promised him with a hug and a kiss that I would be back the next day to feed him his lunch.

    That night, while I slept on the couch of my grandmother’s house, I was awakened by the sound of the phone ringing.  I popped up and ran to the kitchen to pick up the receiver.  It was a nurse from the hospital calling.  My grandfather had passed.  When I hung up the phone my grandmother stood in front of me.  “Good,” she said stoically.  “he wouldn’t want to live like that.”  I never got to use that damned spoon.

  • Cindy Christeson

     

    POP

    I think of Pop, and smile all the way to my childhood. I
    always knew I was adored by my mother’s dad, a man everybody loved, as
    evidenced by his many nicknames.  He
    responded to Byron, Dad, Pop, Popperoni, Uncle Genius, Skipper, and sometimes
    as Frazier, the name of a well-known, well loved lion at a nearby wild animal
    park.

     

    Pop taught by example and loved with his time.  Love of God and of country ran through his
    blood, and he teared up every Christmas when he sang Silent Night.  I stood taller those evenings at 5, when I
    could proudly help him lower the American flag from the towering flagpole on
    his dock.  We always folded it the exact
    same way, and I never questioned the silence while we did so.   

     

    Pop showed me to how to make drip castles in the sand and
    throw rocks in the ocean.  He taught me
    to row a boat and play a mean game of backgammon. There was never a shortage of
    time when I was with Pop, nor a lack of laughter to share. 

     

    He had a twinkle in his eyes when he spoke, and a rascal’s
    smile the moment both of us heard the sound that seemed to elude the others in
    the house. 

    It was the inviting song of the ice-cream truck getting
    closer, which caused my eyes to get wide, and Pop’s wider still.  He always had a logical sounding excuse for
    why he needed to suddenly check on a project in his workshop.  My grandmother never questioned him, nor me,
    when I said there was something I needed to go do as well.   I always thought we’d outsmarted her, but
    now that I’m a grandmother myself, I know better.  I’m sure she smiled to herself whenever Pop
    and I pretended to go our different ways.

     

    We always met up in his workshop, and snuck out a side door
    he assured me my grandmother wouldn’t hear. 
    Then we walked hand in hand down the block to the ice cream truck.  We always bought fudgsicles, chocolate being
    another of our shared connections.  We
    dripped chocolate and laughs all the way home, a tradition that makes me smile
    to this day.  Pop always checked my face
    for sticky evidence before we quietly rejoined my grandmother in the front
    porch.  There we’d play a game or two of
    backgammon or dominoes, winking at each other when my grandmother wasn’t
    looking.

     

    I can picture his smile, I can hear his hearty laugh, and I
    am warmed by the years of sweet memories wrapped around my life.   I miss you Pop.  Thank you for your love, thank you for your
    time.  Thank you for delighting in me, a delight
    that still rings deep in my soul.  That
    ice cream truck still rings in my memory too; it’s calling to me from years
    gone by.  I think it may just be time for
    a fudgsicle again.

     

     

    • Mariaanne

      He sounds like he was a wonderful man, sneaking out and eating fudgsicles.  I wonder if the grandmother knew what was going on.  Well done.  

      • Ernest

        cool grandpa… well written!

  • Ellen

    If I had a grandpa, I may have learned. Grandpas in books are the silent guys. When they speak, they say something simple that cuts through everything. If I had a grandpa, he would be wise. He would smoke a pipe and wear a hat. My grandpa would shuffle about, muttering things barely audible that my grandma would translate. My grandpa would build things and fix things. He would mutter while doing those things too. My grandpa would have a funky old plaid chair and no one wold sit there but him. Books would be piled on all sides of his chair and he would peruse them, looking down through his bifocals at the end of his nose. He wouldn’t mutter here but nod his head in agreement or shake it in disgust. He would fold up the paper to do the crossword puzzle and occasionally ask for word assistance. No one would reply because we all know he knows the word. I would sit on my grandpa’s knee and he would tell me stories about when he was a kid. We would laugh and he would tickle me, but not too hard, and I would laugh and give him a big hug.

    • CareyWriter

       I like your imaginary grandpa!  This is an imaginative response to this prompt.  I wish you had pursued it more, and I hope you do.  Best wishes.

      • Ellen

        I don’t remember my grandpa. Thanks for responding. I had many more ideas after I quit. I always wondered how grandparents would impact my life

  • Katherine

    I never knew my father’s father.  He died just before my mother got pregnant with me, and since my parents were not intending to have children, he never expected I would exist.

    Growing up, everyone told me that my grandfather would have loved having a granddaughter.  He had raised two boys and had all male grandchildren until I came along, so a granddaughter would have been special.  When I heard this, I felt responsible for the fact that he never got to meet me — like it was my fault somehow.

    But I couldn’t understand why he would have been excited to have a granddaughter.  All my cousins on both sides we boys, and everyone loved them.  I was the strange one — the little girl who wanted to play with dolls, while all the boys went out to play football.  I couldn’t imagine that my grandfather would have wanted to play dolls with me.  Wouldn’t he have wanted to play football with the boys?

    My own dad was nothing like the man I heard people describe as my grandfather.  My father was more like his mother in looks and personality.  He was direct, said very little, and seemed emotionless, even though deep down I knew he felt things intensely.  He didn’t particularly like children and only tolerated me because I was his daughter.  I couldn’t imagine what my grandfather was like, since my own father seemed to have inherited so little of his personality.

    To this day, I look at photographs of my grandfather and can’t imagine him.  He looks like a stranger plopped into photos with other people I recognize.  What would he have sounded like?  What would he have done if we had the chance to be together?

  • kateoldkate

                When
    Paw Paw was around, it smelled like sweet cherry tobacco – the whole house did
    and the smell lingered, especially after a kiss.  He and Maw Maw visited once a year from their high-rise
    apartment in Puerto Rico. They lived there because Paw Paw worked for The
    Natural Gas Co.  But as a child, he
    was peripheral to Maw Maw.  Maw Maw
    who wore a jade heart necklace and was always tan.  She had a deep guttural laugh and spent the week that she
    stayed with us hugging us (her four granddaughters) and having us walk back and
    forth in the living room balancing books on our heads, practicing to be Miss
    America. Paw Paw was tall and quiet and made sure that Maw Maw was
    comfortable.  We didn’t know she
    was sick, no one did, but she was the kind of person you watched extra closely,
    always afraid they might go away, and life would not be the same without
    them.  So Paw Paw watched.  And laughed at Maw Maw’s jokes.  And drew cartoons for us, making us
    characters in the little pencil comic strips he drew. 

                I
    was ten when Maw Maw died.  The
    limo for the funeral picked Paw Paw up from our house.  I walked into the den and saw Paw Paw
    sobbing.  I was shoo-ed away by my
    uncle, for walking in on Paw Paw’s grief. 
    I still feel scolded when I think about that moment – it was my house
    and my Paw Paw. 

                Paw
    Paw lived 32 years beyond Maw Maw and I got to know him as an adult.  And I named my son for him and for my
    father.  He was an observer.  A watcher.  Of Maw Maw, of my sisters and I. 

                About
    ten years before he died, he sent me a thick envelope of drawings and letters I
    had written to him and Maw Maw over the years.  He saved pictures I drew before I could even write my name.  He said he sent it to me for me to show
    my children what a thoughtful child I had been to send him pictures and
    letters.  But the fact that he
    saved every letter and picture from each of his ten of his grandchildren says
    it all.  And when I opened the
    envelope, I saw more than the faded crayon self-portraits.  I’m pretty sure I could smell the sweet
    cherry tobacco.

    • Katherine

      This is really touching.  I was particularly moved by the part about walking in on his grief.  There’s something powerful about someone as seemingly strong and powerful as a grandfather sobbing.  It’s also moving that you still feel scolded — is this because you feel bad for walking in on him, or you feel bad that you were scolded because you think you should have been welcome to walk in and comfort him?  I wasn’t sure how to read that part.  Thanks for sharing this.

      • kateoldkate

        thanks for your comments – i still feel scolded because i thought i was part of the grief too, part of the comforting. 

    • Ernest

      really touching… brilliantly crafted !! :->>

  • Brandon Rodgers

    My grandfather suffered from emphysema the last years of his life.  By the time he entered the hospital for the final time he’d reached the point where breathing took every bit of energy he had.  As he lay in that hospital bed dying, his wife of more than 50 years fell in a hospital hallway, having suffered an apparent stroke. 
     
    At thirteen I didn’t understand much, but I recognized that my grandparents were teetering on the edge of death.  I walked into the room where my grandfather lay, his body laboring as he tried to pull in as much life-sustaining oxygen as he could. 
     
    I remembered all those times he had taken me fishing.  My parents would drop my brother and me off early in the morning.  My grandmother would already have breakfast on the table—made from scratch biscuits, eggs, maybe some sausage.  My grandfather would be sitting in his usual spot, sipping his coffee from the green mug he always used.  He would already be done with breakfast and working on the word search in the morning paper.  He always smelled faintly of tobacco and Old Spice aftershave.  That was my grandfather.
     
    My brother and I would quickly scarf down some breakfast, eager to get going.  If we were going fishing for catfish, my grandmother would’ve been to the store the day before to buy chicken liver.  Sometimes, especially when we were younger, my grandfather would take an old pair of my grandmother’s nylons and cut them into little squares.  He carefully cut the chicken liver into pieces, wrap up each piece in one of the nylon squares, and tie it closed with a piece of thread.  The chicken liver was slippery, and for a couple boys unskilled at fishing, it would often fly off the hook when we cast, but the nylon helped to keep it on the hook, and the catfish never seemed to mind.
     
    All those fishing trips flashed through my mind as I sat staring at my grandfather, who now lay wasting away.  When I was very young we’d gone to a little pond to fish.  The pond was in the middle of a cow pasture, and a bull wandered over, unhappy with us being on his territory.  I was terrified of the giant beast, but my grandfather punched it right on the nose and sent it running away.  But there he lay, with barely the strength to keep breathing.
     
    Everyone stepped out.  My grandfather and I sat alone in the semi-darkness of the hospital room.  The machines he was hooked to periodically beeped, but the only other sound was his breathing.  The telephone rang, startling me.  My grandmother, who was bed-bound as a result of her stroke, was calling from her hospital room to check on my grandfather.  The stroke had made speech difficult for her, and I struggled to understand, but I finally got it and let her know that he was okay.
     
    When I hung up the phone my grandfather gasped out, “Why didn’t you let me talk to her?”
     
    The answer was that he couldn’t understand her between her slurred speech and his poor hearing, and she couldn’t understand him, because he could barely speak.  He lay there, staring sadly at the ceiling.  Finally he whispered, “I don’t know when I’ll be able to talk to her again.”
     
    Sometime shortly after that, they wheeled my grandmother to my grandfather’s room.  They couldn’t speak to one another.  They lay in their respective hospital beds and just held hands.  They’d spent their lives together.  Through everything, good and bad, they’d stood together.  And at the end of their lives, when nothing more could be said, they simply held hands, together still.

    • Mariaanne

      It’s great that they were together at the end.  I felt heart broken when I read “I don’t know when I’ll talk to her again.”  I’m glad it ended like it did. Thanks 

      • Brandon Rodgers

        That was over 20 years ago, and I still remember just how crushed I felt when he said that, and them lying there holding hands made a big impact on me–such a sad/sweet moment.  Thank you for taking the time to comment.

    • http://thewritepractice.com/ John Fisher

      Simply told and with dignity.  Fine writing.

      • Brandon Rodgers

        Thank you.

    • Katherine

      Wow.  This is really powerful.  Thanks for sharing.  You really get a sense of their devotion to each other and the pain it must have caused to not be able to be together and speak when they needed each other most.  I’m glad they were able to be together and hold hands in the end.

      • Brandon Rodgers

        Thank you so much.

    • Cindy Christeson

      Oh Brandon, how sweet, how sad….but how loving to the end, holding hands.  Beautifully written, thank you.

      • Brandon Rodgers

        Thank you. I’m pretty new around here. It has been very encouraging to get the positive feedback.

    • Diana Trautwein

      Lovely, lovely, lovely. And what a legacy for our entire family. Thanks for this.

      • Brandon Rodgers

        Thank you. It definitely has stuck with me over the years.

    • Ernest

      wow man!! brilliant!! :->>

    • Mirelba

       beautiful story.  thanks for sharing.

    • http://www.facebook.com/yvette.carol Yvette Carol

      Very moving, Brandon.

    • C. L. Wood

       A beautiful story. 

  • http://thewritepractice.com/ John Fisher

    Grandma did the talking  when it came to telling how she and Grandpa came to adopt my uncle, R.B.  It was a Gothic tale involving a woman in black who came to town in a black buggy bringing an infant who needed a home.  It never occurred to me at my young age to question such a story; everything they related about the times in which they grew up might have described life on another world.

    But looking back, I came to realize that my Grandpa had behaved a bit oddly when the woman-in-black story was being recited.  A twinkling amusement in his blue eyes, so inconsistent  with Grandma’s somber and sentimental narrative that it had almost the quality of a teenager’s inappropriate levity in church, would light his features at odd moments; at other points there was a quiet, secretive aspect of sadness about him in the slump of his shoulders as his gaze wandered off out their parlor window.  

    I remember just vaguely a whispered recounting of a later incident in which a grown-up R.B., who had become a drinking man, showed up back home and said something to the effect that he was gonna get some answers or else.  Not a story for general retelling;  I believe there may have been a gun involved.  

    On the whole, this has served to humanize everyone involved to me.  Let’s say that — just possibly — my grandparents had committed an “indiscretion” before they were legally married.  How, in the context of rural Texas circa 1915, in a culture of large extended families and strict religiously-based mores, would the family have chosen to deal with the situation?  If that is what happened, perhaps it was my Grandmother’s reaction that led her to become a member of the Holiness church, a group that loudly condemned all that they considered “worldly”, and to pretty much drag her husband along with her.  

    Grandpa apparently chose to be quiet, to work hard, to work with whatever the circumstances were:  when a fall off a power-line tower ended his career as a supervisor for an early electric power company, he used the settlement money to buy a few acres of land and start a chicken farm, which was what he was doing by the time I was born.  His utter silence on the matter of R.B. (as far as I know) for the rest of his life, speaks to me more of inner strength and commitment than anything he ever said. 

    • Mariaanne

      I like this and particularly the part where you describe him as when “inappropriate levity” lights his face while his grandmother tries to explain where R. B. came from.  

      • http://thewritepractice.com/ John Fisher

        Thank you; yes, he had a humor and a liveliness that always attracted me as a kid.

    • http://www.facebook.com/dam.busch Adam Smusch

      Wow.  This is awesome.  The tension between R.B. and his father, the vulnerabilities of raising a child due to an affair in Texas….  I would to see this in a longer format.  The part with R.B. and the gun, from a child’s perspective, would be so interesting.  The beginning had a great hook and the ending with the comparison of his “worldly” strength and  his commitment had a strong finish.  This was a great read.

      • http://thewritepractice.com/ John Fisher

        Thank you very much — this will be part of the memoir I’ve been working on, off and on, for years.  The whispering about  a gun sure got my ten-year-old attention!

    • Brandon Rodgers

      “Grandpa apparently chose to be quiet, to work hard, to work with whatever the circumstances were” I’ve found this to be true from so many of that generation.  Well done.

      • http://thewritepractice.com/ John Fisher

        Yes!  He worked harder than I’ll ever be able to.  Thank you.

  • http://twitter.com/DoogieHoser Doogie Glassford

    He was not the kind of guy that was easy to get along with. He was gregarious with friends and family but moody or pensive when alone. He’d worked hard all his life, even before he came to America. He was a Scotsman as was his father before him. Now, he is an American… don’t ever call him anything else.

    His generation lived in black and white, and I’m not just talking about photographs and television. It is how they saw things. It’s not that they didn’t love color, they had a grand respect for nature and life. They had no patience for gray, for people who muddled through life claiming tact as a replacement for honesty.

    My father’s father was a large man. I think he appeared much bigger than he actually was, but he was a very strong man, worked two full-time jobs and volunteered as a fireman. He fathered 14 children and lost 2 shortly after they were born. He never questioned what had always been in his family line, trusting the Good Lord to provide as he and his lovely bride continued to have babies for the first 25 years of their marriage.

    He was not a religious man, but he had a strong faith in God. We all went to Sunday Mass to please our grandmother. If we did not attend morning mass we were not welcome at here dinner table. It was just they way it was, black and white, nothing gray. A generation that helped build our country into the amazing nation it is today.

    • http://thewritepractice.com/ John Fisher

      A sharply drawn description that commands respect.  

    • http://KatieAxelson.com/ Katie Axelson

      Two full-time jobs, a volunteer fireman, AND 14 children?

  • Mariaanne

    This is about a grandfather that I never knew but I have a picture of him and my grandmother at Atlantic City on their honeymoon in about 1918. 

    The bottles of beer smacked and broke in volleys, in the big metal sink, in the basement, while my father, a boy of eight, stood in the middle of the room wondering whether to hide or to try to stop his mother from breaking every bottle they had made that month. 

    During prohibition the beer companies didn’t sell beer but did sell kits to make home brew. The kit included all the ingredients and a reciepe.  My father and grandfather brewed beer in the basement of their house by the bay. Sometimes as the beer fermented and released gas, the caps would blow off of the bottles and hit the ceiling of the basement which was also the floor of the dining room.  My grandmother and great-grandmother would hear the caps thump against the floor and take it upon themselves to rid the house of the evil alcohol.    

    “Get thee behind,” she yelled as she threw the bottles smashing them in the sink. 

    “Your father has no strength to repel Satan.  He is an alcoholic,” she said when she was finished.  Then she wiped her hand on her apron and went upstairs.  

    “We have to find a way to keep the caps from flying off,” was all his father said, and they walked out to the beach to smoke cigars.  My father was ten so he only got one puff off each cigar.  His father was his best friend and he was sure that the devil didn’t live in the bottles of beer that they made.  

    *

    My grandfather came into the dining room where the family was eating breakfast,

    “I’ve poisoned myself,” he said. 

    My father drove him to the hospital.  They were lucky they still had a car.  The depression was in full swing.  The car smelled like cigars and perfume.  Smells of wealth lingered in the car, reminders of a better time that were slowly evaporating, thinning but glistening, gold and rich red, lace and tassels, antimacassars and watch fobs.  

    He listened to his father say he didn’t want to die, and he listened to his father choke and gurgle and he knew his father was dead before they got to the hospital.

    • http://www.ordinaryservant.com/ Pilar Arsenec

      Wow Marianne, this is great!  I love it. 

      • Mariaanne

        Thanks Pilar

    • Brandon Rodgers

      There’s so much story in that little *  I liked it.

      • Mariaanne

        Thanks Brandon

    • Cindy Christeson

      Wow, that was powerful Marianne…beautiful sentences too….smells of wealth lingered….

      • Mariaanne

        Thanks Cindy

        • Mirelba

            Yup, Marianne, that’s the sentence that stayed with me as well. the one where the smell of wealth lingered on. Well done.  Each family with their special stories passed down…

          • Mariaanne

            It’s funny that sentence just rolled out completely unplanned. I was thinking about how cars used to smell when they contained less “plastic” than they do now.  I remember the perfume my great-grandmother  wore “emerude’ which smells kind of like play dough but sweeter.  

      • Mirelba

         Yup, Marianne, that’s the sentence that stayed with me as well.  Well done.  Each family with their special stories passed down…

    • http://KatieAxelson.com/ Katie Axelson

      Wow!

      • Mariaanne

        Thanks Katie.  

    • http://www.facebook.com/zoe.dyer Zoe Beech

      This is so gripping, Mariaane.  From the first crash of the beer bottles, to the end drive to the hospital, you demand the readers attention.  And you go from humour to sadness so quickly but the story doesn’t skip a beat.  I love the wisdom of the ten year old, and those smells that ‘were slowly evaporating.’  Great.

      • Mariaanne

        Thanks Zoe!

    • Marla

      My gosh Marianne. Every post of yours is stronger than the last. The 1st paragraph hooked me & I couldn’t stop!

    • http://www.facebook.com/yvette.carol Yvette Carol

      Brrr, that choking and gurgling at the end were totally visceral.

    • C. L. Wood

       This is a great story.  The ending left me feeling desolate

  • http://spiritualsidekick.com/ Tom Wideman

    My grandpa was part of the last generation of great American farmers, before they went all soft and high-tech. He and his wife, Gert reared four strong and handsome children on their family farm. A sanctuary of rolling hills and river bluffs in the Mississippi river bottom he and his brother cleared off with an axe, a saw and their four calloused hands. A six-room house built with hand-honed bricks made from the sand out of the creek running through their lower pasture. The red dairy barn covered in tin-roofing, flanked by a sentinel stone silo  and surrounded by a family of mismatched  stone and frame sheds and well-houses.

    Through the eyes of his admiring grandson, I thought the farm was as much a part of him, as grandma was. They all went together. Their own sacred trinity. 

    Grandpa was a weathered old barn, always open to friends, as well as a variety of stray animals and hobos walking the tracks down by the river. He was a massive old silo that stood strong as he weathered floods and droughts through years of changing seasons. Grandpa was formed out of the same sandy soil that provided the home for his family; a fortress against the elements and evil of his day. He was honed and chiseled by Life, bearing the scars and marks that only served to make him stronger.

    Grandpa also had his soft side as well. Whether it was his twanging out love songs to his sweetheart while driving into town for an ice cream, or letting his granddaughters give him a makeover and pedicure, he was always a gentle touch with his girls. He was a man of faith, who prayed for rain to fall and floodwaters to recede and taught the men’s Sunday School class for several decades at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church.

    Today, as a grandpa myself, I see the old man looking back at me while I shave. I see his wrinkles and scars, his same thinning hair and expanding belly. I pray I will see the same godly qualities as well.

    • http://www.ordinaryservant.com/ Pilar Arsenec

      You are such a great writer, seriously.

    • womenofletters

      This really creates a nice image of what kind of man he was and what life was like. The comparison of his character to the barn, silo, sandy soil, etc. was really beautiful. 

      All in all, a very clean and balanced piece of work.I agree with Pilar, you’re a great writer. 

    • Mariaanne

      That is so well written Tom.  I like the ending when you see him in yourself after seeing him in so many other things.  We do begin to look more like our parents and grandparents as we age, and like you I hope I have some of their good qualities.  

    • Katherine

      This is really well written.  I love how you compare him to the parts of the farm.  I feel like I can imagine the place and the person completely.

    • Cindy Christeson

      Beautiful Tom…I especially like that grandpa was a weathered old barn…ah but with such a soft side too.  It sounds like he lives on through you!  Well done!

    • http://thewritepractice.com/ John Fisher

      Beautiful as only writing straight from the heart can be.

    • Diana Trautwein

      I LOVE this – and I am thrilled to see another grandparent in this group. Thanks for the rich detail and lovely metaphors. He’s a man I would love to meet.

    • http://twitter.com/pootlesuzie Suzie Gallagher

      the circle of life Tom, well executed piece, is he real? Mine was makey uppy as usual.

    • Lisa Roberts

      I really enjoyed this.  I liked how you introduced the idea of your grandfather and the farm being one and the same from the first paragraph where you describe the rolling hills and bluffs as being cleared by his own “calloused hands.”  It sets up the 2nd paragraph beautifully…

    • http://www.facebook.com/zoe.dyer Zoe Beech

      This is beautiful!  You get such a sense of him, and the family he raised…  So many great lines – ‘He was a massive old silo that stood strong as he weathered floods and droughts…’ that alone is SUCH a great metaphor.  But my favourite is ‘I thought the farm was as much a part of him as grandma was.’ – WOW – that’s the kind of ‘truth’ that readers are looking for, and identify with so strongly, giving words to deep feelings we don’t understand.  

    • Marla

      I love your use of the word trinity. So beautiful.

    • http://www.facebook.com/yvette.carol Yvette Carol

      Grandpa was a weathered old barn is wonderful use of metaphor!

    • C. L. Wood

       Yes, they are important people, grandfathers.  I think you have captured this idea very strongly.  Your writing flows so smoothly that two small things leapt off the page and I feel I should mention them – “sand” in line six and “also” and “as well” the first line of the second last paragraph.  congratulations on a lovely evocative piece.

  • womenofletters

    Sweat dripped from his wrinkled brow. Skinny, burned-brown arms bent, pushing the shovel deep down the dirt. I was seven and had my arms curled around my knees, sitting and watching by the shades to protect my pale skin from the bright sun. My grandfather would soon fade away.

    He had never been more than a hard working man, analphabetic, and a savant at math without any form of recognition.

    His vision blurred and sounds faded. He couldn’t move, that once working man. Nor could he talk. With a foul expression his daughter dragged his limp body around the house.

    The proud of a land worker failed him on his deathbed – promising he would come to get that wench of a daughter. A silent cry in his wide blind dark eyes, ‘I don’t want to die’.

    Poverty had stolen his life away and left only a body to be used as a weapon. Poor humans didn’t deserve a chance, they were tools, chances were meant for the rich. But my grandfather lived a good life, earned enough money and enjoyed nice meals. For her sake, my grandmother forced me to believe so.

    • http://spiritualsidekick.com/ Tom Wideman

      Wow! What a powerful image, seeing your once strong grandfather turned into a lifeless pawn in a family squabble. So sad, but told brilliantly.

      • womenofletters

        Thanks, I’m glad I didn’t mess up the practice :) 

    • http://www.ordinaryservant.com/ Pilar Arsenec

      This made me sad. :(

    • Mariaanne

      The second sentence is wonderful. It reads sort of like poetry. 

      • womenofletters

        Thank you for the comment, now that I looked back I noticed that I used group of words that start with the same letter, so maybe that’s what caused the beat.

  • http://www.ordinaryservant.com/ Pilar Arsenec

    There was an awkward tension between us. I didn’t understand what he was saying as he was bouncing me up and down on his lap. He smiled. I smiled back. We came from two different worlds.  I felt like an alien.  He grew up in this small fishing village. He rough chapped hands tell the story. Especially as he started shoving steamed mussels down my throat. I didn’t want to disappoint him by telling him to stop.  

    • http://spiritualsidekick.com/ Tom Wideman

      Pilar, this really choked me up. I can sense sense your grief and longing. The last two lines are powerful images.

      • http://www.ordinaryservant.com/ Pilar Arsenec

        Hi there, thanks for dropping by and commenting. Sorry, I didn’t mean to choke you up. :(  Now I’m going to go read what you wrote, I always love what you write. Even your comments are good.

    • Mariaanne

      Oh Pilar how simply and well said.  Those mussels  can represent so much that is shoved down one generations throat by the older generations. 

      • http://www.ordinaryservant.com/ Pilar Arsenec

        Thanks Mariaanne. You know, you have a great point there. :)

    • http://KatieAxelson.com/ Katie Axelson

      I agree with Mariaanne–simple and well-said.
      (Although, I will confess I first read, “shoving steamed muscles down my throat” and I had pause, rewind, and reread before I saw my own error. Makes more sense your way. Funnier mine.)

  • ladywriter616

    He made everything with his own hands. Even as a
    six-year-old girl, I was in awe of the three-room garage, a workroom with
    leaded glass windows that housed greasy screwdrivers, toothy wrenches and drawers
    and drawers of nuts, bolts and nails. The smells of must, oil and woodshavings
    are what I remember most. Remnants of the cars he fixed, the lawn he mowed and
    the home he built for he and his bride so many years ago.

     

    A Polish immigrant, he landed in Flint, Mich. I know very
    little about him. He died when I was six, and he wasn’t really my grandfather.
    He was my dad’s foster mother’s dad – the first old person I ever knew. I have faded memories of his small, fragile
    frame (he was 86 when he died), his evident Polish accent and his strong,
    sturdy hands. The hands he built the all-stone, two-story cape cod on what was
    once a country road. The hands that planted rows of sour green grapes I ate straight
    from the vine in summertime. The hands that built the platform swing that my
    brother, cousins and I spent hours on during family gatherings.

     

    • Mariaanne

      That was great.  I got the odor of sawdust from it when you were talking about his tools.  I like your idea of having part of him still there not just in your memories of him but of the grapes he planted and the swings he built.  

  • Duncanann4

    The little girl squealed with delight, the swing seemed to fly through the air and then plummet. Each time she would feel the steady strong hands of her grandfather push her forward into the blue. She stretched her arms out and closed her eyes and in an instant she was a bird flying free. Her grandfather’s hearty laugh filled her ears.

    “Your mother used to do the same thing when she was your age. What kind of bird are you?” He asked, and she knew that he wasn’t mocking. Grandfather never mocked her. 

    “I’m a robin!” The little girl yelled with joy. She started to sing and the swing swung forward again. She opened her eyes as yet again she grew close to the blue one more time.

    “I love robbins! They’re the first sign of spring that doesn’t make me sneeze.” Grandfather laughed his hearty laugh, and she couldn’t help but laugh along.

    It was a warm scene that came back to her mind as she stood over his headstone. That had been twenty-five years ago, and even now the memory made her smile. Ever since that day, any time she saw or heard a robin, she thought of her grandfather. Him, his pipe, and the way his wrinkles would scrunch up when he smiled would be there in her minds eye. She knelt down and brushed some twigs away and as she did, she heard it, the distinct song of a robin. She laughed a hearty laugh and stayed a few minutes longer.

    • http://www.ordinaryservant.com/ Pilar Arsenec

      So beautiful, I enjoyed reading this.

    • ladywriter616

      This is beautiful. I enjoy how you marked this memory and now have a vivid annual reminder of this otherwise everyday yet extraordinary moment between you and your grandfather.

    • http://spiritualsidekick.com/ Tom Wideman

      Very nice. It challenges me, as a grandpa of 2, going on 3, to be mindful of how my words and actions last in their memory long after I’m gone. I so want those memories to be as happy as yours.

    • Mariaanne

      Beautiful.  I love the part about “what kind of bird are you”.  It seems like often grandparents and their grandchildren are allowed more time to imagine and play than other family pairings.  

  • http://www.youngaspiringwriter.blogspot.com/ Chihuahua Zero

    “My Favorite Granddaughter”

    My pregnant granddaughter, Cynthia, was the one designated to check that I hadn’t fallen at home most days. For that, I was grateful.
    Despite having opened one of the Oreos packages for herself, she was putting everything away slowly and carefully, in all the right cabinets and refrigerator shelves.

     I stood in the doorway, my cane tip pressed agains the peeling trim. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl yet?”

    “Not yet.” Cynthia tilted her head. “well, not officially.” She frumpled a Bunny loaf out of the paper bag and slid open the old bread box. “I feel like it’s a she.”

    I grinned. “You’re most certainly right, if you inherited the family intuition. An one hundred percent rate! Your grandmother knew the genres of your brother Thomas, your sister Patti, and the twins Martian and Shelly. Too bad they’re away. But your grandmother even guessed what ordered the twins would pop out!”

    Cynthia giggled. “Grandpa, you already told me that story last week.”

    I nodded grimly. My memory seemed to slip more and more every visit. More and more I spaced out, my mind like a tripod camera not capturing any film, or a printer with an empty carthage only inking spots and blots. What was worse was how my body creaked and I walked less and less as my lungs wakened. Senility would come any day, and place me into a sorry, sorry state until my grave.

    Cynthia smiled sadly too, as she stacked the Double Stuffs, with vanilla-chocolate filling. My favorites. They were the closest cookies to the wafers I bought my late wife, Kate, on our first date. And on the date I proposed to her.

    I exhaled deeply. “Cynthia, can you do one favor for me?”

    “Anything.” She rubbed her stomach, where her baby was.

    “As soon as she is born, will you have someone drive me to see her? I’ll like to see my great-granddaughter while I still have the chance.”

    Cynthia beamed as she folded up the paper bags. “Don’t worry. I know you’ll make it.” She walked up to me and bent her knees so she looked at me at eye level. She stared into my eyes. “I won’t leave you, like all my other siblings.”

    “You’ll have to leave this town one day,” I said. “Only if for the child. One day, this town will die.”

    “Nonsense. She’ll love it here. And she’ll love you.” She opened her hand to reveal an Oreo. “As long as there’re these, you’re not going to be off your rocker.”

    Cynthia slipped one of the cookies off the filling and popped it into her mouth. As she savored it, just how Kate used to eat the wafers, I was reminded about why she was my favorite granddaughter.

    • http://www.facebook.com/rebekah.schulzjackson Rebekah Schulz-Jackson

       I really like the relationship between the grandfather and granddaughter here. You’ve done a nice job of showing (rather than telling) us some of the things that qualify Cynthia as “favorite granddaughter”. (Is this auto/biographical or fiction? Just curious.)

      • http://www.youngaspiringwriter.blogspot.com/ Chihuahua Zero

        It’s fiction, although I used my great-grandma’s kitchen as a model for the setting. And my dad’s bread box. And I think the Oreos made it in because someone bought them to class as a snack.

        • http://www.facebook.com/rebekah.schulzjackson Rebekah Schulz-Jackson

           Well then congratulations on narration so convincing that I thought you could be an old man! =)

          • http://www.youngaspiringwriter.blogspot.com/ Chihuahua Zero

            Thanks!

            Considering that I’m a teenager, that’s probably a feat for me.

    • http://www.ordinaryservant.com/ Pilar Arsenec

      Very nice. :)

    • Plumjoppa

       I love that this is told from Grandpa’s point of view. 

    • Mariaanne

      I like this because it’s more like a story than a memoir.  I can see them enjoying their oreos now.  

  • Scharz21

    Sky blue hardhat under his arm and gnarled hand holding a tin lunchbox he’d walk out the back door and into pre-dawn West Virginia. Since I was small I really didn’t understand what he did between the time the old green Pontiac rolled up the driveway in the morning and when he walked through the same back door just as my grandmother was setting places on the checkered plastic tablecloth every afternoon.  As I got older I learned that while I was above the town in a second floor classroom or was underwater in the Oglebay Park swimming pool he was a thousand feet underground scraping cave walls for coal and not realizing that the fuel’s by-product was not pollution but cancer. I remember most of his words not so much that there weren’t many spoken but those that did appear were necessary and left you wanting more and as I sit and recall his infrequent wisdom I look up to the shelf that holds a gift from my grandmother.  A dusty old hardhat whose color in my fading mind matches the eyes of my grandfather.

    • http://www.facebook.com/rebekah.schulzjackson Rebekah Schulz-Jackson

       Wow! Great first line, and I love the part about not understanding where your grandfather went — vivid and relatable. I want to see where this is going!

    • http://www.ordinaryservant.com/ Pilar Arsenec

      Wow, this is good.

    • Cindy Christeson

      Oh…his sacrifice and his love.  Well written!

    • http://www.facebook.com/zoe.dyer Zoe Beech

      Just beautiful.  My favourite line  is you being on the second floor and him a thousand feet underground, but there are so many beautiful sentences here.

  • http://www.facebook.com/rebekah.schulzjackson Rebekah Schulz-Jackson

     Love it! Here’s my attempt: “Portrait of a Grandpa”
    http://thesjs.com/creative-writing-portrait-of-a-grandpa/

  • http://twitter.com/pootlesuzie Suzie Gallagher

    My grandfather got a real velvet cap for playing rugby for his county, he was more proud of the teeth lost in a brawl on the pitch. I used to pull his whiskers when he was asleep.
    He taught me how to gamble, fruit machines were his vice, I raised a glass of bubbly to him in Vegas when I won twenty thou. I raised a glass of water to him in my sobriety on his birthday this year.He gave me cooking sherry from the age of eight, it made me “a-meen-able” he said. I remember floating in the ether of nothingness, happily hovering above images I didn’t understand. I have a garden with no shed and I grow vegetables, my children eat from the garden.He sold dried tray meals that could be reconstituted with hot water, granny would not have them in the house so we ate them in the shed where no one would find us, after the “a-pear-a teeve” and the odd feelings. We don’t speak ill of the dead in Ireland.I loved my grandfather more than any of my other relatives. He loved me best too. We loved with a passion. He died before I reached thirteen. I cried buckets at the funeral. There was a girl there, she looked like me, she cried too.

    • http://www.ordinaryservant.com/ Pilar Arsenec

      Gosh, he sounds like a great grandfather. Very touching.

    • Mariaanne

      That was beautiful Suzie.  I’m glad you got to know him.  I’ll toast him and you right now with my own glass of water.  Cheers and go with God.  

    • http://thewritepractice.com/ John Fisher

      Such a loving look back at a grandfather so loved — I remember I was twelve too the year both my Grandpa’s died — I was inconsolable.   You’ve hit upon the universal love for one’s elders here I think!

    • Cindy Christeson

      That was precious Suzie, my grandfather loved me like that too.  We are blessed to have had that kind of love.

    • http://KatieAxelson.com/ Katie Axelson

      This is a very touching tribute, Suzie. Reading through, I was shocked he died when you were so young. Your scenes are so vivid.

      Katie

    • http://twitter.com/pootlesuzie Suzie Gallagher

      Thank you all for your beautiful comments, this man is not real. One of my grandads kept stilton on his desk where he saw patients until the maggots came and then ate it in front of people for shock value. The other one was quiet, quietly out of the way of my grandma and quietly, softly having affairs around town.

      This piece though, I need your help, I am showing not telling, leaving chunks of ether for the reader to grasp and “get” the real meaning. Obviously I am doing it wrong because you all are calling him lovely. Am I too subtle, or just missing the mark completely? What am I doing wrong (this is not the first time that my subtext has been ignored) that the insidious nature of abusers is not seen but only the cheerful pretend self.

      “We loved with a passion” “we don’t speak ill of the dead in Ireland” “in the shed here no one would find us” “floating above images I didn’t understand”

      For example “my memoir” or my testimony reads – I met love when I was two years old.

      Personally I think this means I met a mighty unconditional love at two but before that there was no love, this opens it up for the listener to put their own take on it without me having to explain how I came to be in that position. Am I wrong? Have I lost the plot completely.

       

      • Mirelba

        Hi Suzie- I find it frustrating when people don’t react to my questions, so here I am responding to yours. 
        I think your text was subtle, which I generally like, but too subtle.  Maybe because you waited too long to introduce it, so that it left me confused when it entered the picture.  There is no foreshadowing in the first paragraph, the pulling on his whiskers when he slept doesn’t do it- lots of kids see their grandparents doze off, so it’s not much of a hint.

          I understood that you got over a drinking problem in your 2nd paragraph, but you only let us understand that it was probably serioulsy helped along/begun by the grandfather in the 3rd paragraph. In that same paragraph, you mention that you have a garden with no shed, by which time I was totally confused, because I had no idea what that was about.  What the girl went through in the shed is only hinted at in the next paragraph.  And although you did write in the shed “where no one would find us” it was prefaced by the grandmother not allowing the meal in the house, so at first reading I assumed it was so the grandmother wouldn’t know about the ‘forbidden’ meal.  It’s as if you add details to the subtlety which only serve to obfuscate the issue making it hard to see what’s really there.

        You generally write such nice pieces, but this one feels all over the place, it needs tweaking so that when you lead us to what happens, it is subtle but clear.

        My 2 cents, ’cause I definitely think you can do it.

        • http://twitter.com/pootlesuzie Suzie Gallagher

          thanks Mirelba, I appreciate it very much.

          • Ernest

            hey..I don’t mean to butt in.. but could you please review what i wrote … it would mean a lot to get tips from someone who writes so well!!

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=577106571 Thuy Yau

          Wow, what honest and respectful advice!

          • Mirelba

            thanks.

      • http://www.facebook.com/zoe.dyer Zoe Beech

        Oh yes, this was great, but too subtle.  I read the piece and thought, what an eccentric old man – and thought he had contributed to her drinking problem, but didn’t see the abuse there. ‘We loved with a passion’ to me seemed just like this was an emotional and close family.  Also, the shed scene would have made more sense if you keep it together and add something a little more sinister – you mention not having a shed before you say ‘where no one would find us’ and I didn’t see the punch in that either.  It just needs a few changes, I think, to make this as crystal in our minds as yours.  But excellent writing.

      • Marla

        Suzie,

        I read it twice before I got it. What sealed it for me was that she had no shed. I think your trouble is that your writing is so lovely. Maybe be a little more direct in the 1st paragraph.

        • http://twitter.com/pootlesuzie Suzie Gallagher

          thanks Marla, I think I was aiming for the fuzz of knowing but not knowing so there was genuine love for the grandfather mixed up in lust/love that was inappropriate. So there is that mix up of affectionate memories and hints of a darker side.

    • Lisa Roberts

      Suzie, I saw the subtext clearly.  From the beginning when you raise a glass to him I wonder right there how he might have contributed to the hinted issue of alcohol abuse.  When at 8, he gives you cooking sherry (what other alcohol could an adult give a child that they might be able to pass off as something sweet or tasty?) and you float “in the ether of nothingness…above images” you didn’t understand I saw that as implying he got you drunk to abuse you.  I made the same inference in the 4th paragraph…Your last paragraph can be seen to show the mixed feelings a child feels at the hands of their abuser…on the one hand they are made to feel “special” and on the other hand, there is relief that the abuser is dead.  Well done!

    • emd04

      Love how you convey his accent through writing. Great piece. 

    • Ernest

      wow!! beautifully written!

    • Julianausten

      I get it :( Sadly I have come to distrust my “getting” – seeing bad stuff – oh lets not beat around the bush – seeing abuse because often it’s just me – my experience, my sensitivity and its not really there. I believe the problem here is that the piece is short and its hard to convey the complexity of that situation – the love that is felt for an abuser vs the betrayal of that affection and all the rest of it!  This would work beautifully in a longer piece. So that a reader who didn’t get it until page 40 could go back and go Ah Hah! I love that in a book the fore-shadowing. Sorry this is probably completely incoherent.

    • http://www.facebook.com/yvette.carol Yvette Carol

      Lovely. Some of your best writing, Suzie.

    • C. L. Wood

       this is a very clever piece of writing Suzie.  You have shown the character so well in the first paragraph and also introduced the innocence of the child.  Your second paragraph takes us into a darker world of lifetime influences and a battle against terrible childhood experiences.  I am not sure that you need the complete last sentence of the third paragraph.  but the last sentence of the fourth paragraph is well placed, a link to the final paragraph.
      Congratulations. 

    • http://joebunting.com Joe Bunting

      This was incredible, Suzie. You need to send this somewhere. Just as is, no need to add to it. It’s complete, I think. Let me know if you need ideas on where to send it.

      • http://twitter.com/pootlesuzie Suzie Gallagher

        Thanks Joe, yes please tell me where to send it. I guess I have to do this step eventually why not now.

        • http://joebunting.com Joe Bunting

          Good for you! Okay go here:

          http://letswriteashortstory.com/literary-magazines/

          And then scroll down to the flash fiction magazines. Then just start at Vestal Review and work your way down. I’d read a few pieces from each and see if it your piece fits. Then submit away! :)

  • Plumjoppa

    All my daughter can remember about grandpa is that he used to say “who’s that little girl” when we
    would visit. She knew about Grandpa’s Chair, and that only grandpa
    could sit in it, except for the rare occasions when a grandchild was
    placed on his lap. He would never hoist one there himself. He
    didn’t like the noise of the families visiting, even though he was
    going deaf. He couldn’t relax with the world moving so quickly,
    small toddlers darting under foot, sticky fingers touching ceramic
    figurines.

    “Hey Ma, watch that one, he’s going
    to break that duck!”

    Every morning, grandpa would make the
    only meal he felt a man should be prevailed upon to make, breakfast.
    He poured milk and sugar on toast and called it milktoast.  Well into his 90s, he put on his green cotton cap, and ambled out to the shed to tinker  with hoes, clamps and his lawn
    tractor. He worked slowly, and sat in the white plastic chair to
    rest. He gazed at the mountain before him, that had allowed him to
    overlook the junk yard in the valley, when deciding on this land. He
    thought only of what he had lost, his farm, tractor, independence,
    purpose. Who needed him now? He thought of his blue Ford F150
    truck, the one with dents in the side from sideswiping that tree.
    Gone now, discretely given to his son instead of giving up his drivers
    license.

    • Scharz21

      mountain vs junk yard – love it!

    • Mariaanne

      I like this picture of a man trying to figure out what to do with himself and his stuff at the end of his life.  It’s sad but there is something very functional about how he is handling things.  

  • MitchellAllen

    Joe, I didn’t know you were going to add this today. This is great! Here is a link to my prompt, which had the additional restriction of your chosen ten words.

    Thanks for being an inspiration.

    http://www.creativecopychallenge.com/writing-prompts-creative-copy-challenge-274/comment-page-1/#comment-31623

  • Lynn

     He wasn’t a big man, my grandfather,
    but he was must have been important. It was his house at which they
    gathered, the other hunters. I watched them from the back porch of my
    grandparent’s house. Most of them in bib overalls, some in denim
    britches. Some wore heavy tweed coats to ward off the morning chill.
    They stood at the edge of the garden and chatted quietly while they
    drank hot coffee, the steam rising from their Styrofoam cups like
    chimney smoke.

    They waited.

    • http://www.facebook.com/rebekah.schulzjackson Rebekah Schulz-Jackson

      Favorite line: “They stood at the edge of the garden and chatted quietly while they drank hot coffee, the steam rising from their Styrofoam cups like chimney smoke.”

      Wow! Instant brain-picture!

    • http://www.ordinaryservant.com/ Pilar Arsenec

      I like this, I was able to see it. :)

    • Mariaanne

      Simple and very effective details. This is great.  

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