Grandpa

My grandfather on my dad’s side was the only living grandpa I had growing up. I knew him as a long haul truck driver. A cowboy. One who wandered. There were vague whispers of time spent out west on ranches and in rodeos. My father recalls brief, dusk-lit visits back on the Michigan farm - where his father had abandoned his own children to his parents and spinster sisters - as fun and brief: brothers saddled to bucking calves in the snow; laughter in the hayloft near Christmas. Hymns in the night around the piano. And then that sad horizon, soaking up their only father, again, one last time.

Everything I’ve learned about forgiveness I’ve learned from my dad.

I didn’t understand the gravity of what it meant for my grandfather to take up residence on a parcel of land near my uncle’s house after decades of abandonment and absence, nor the weight of the grace that attended his appearances around fire rings on our visits north. As a boy, I knew him as a mythical figure; a grizzled man with a deep, storied voice, coaxed from a restless soul by an endless chain of Marlboro cigarettes. 

One day, after an eight-hour journey from Chicago, I wandered my way to his single-wide trailer door. He regarded me with a grandpa’s grin. There were questions about my father: How had he been; how was work; how was the car. What were they teaching me in school. There was a pipe in his mouth; guns and knives in the kitchen. I went away with a rifle and a box of rimfire .22 shells.

I was half-way through the box at twilight when dad and Uncle Jim wandered out to find me near the river. My uncle asked if he could see the gun. “Grandpa said you could have this?” I nodded my head. Knowing glances traded between uncle and dad. “Maybe one day, Kevin. But this gun isn’t your grandpa’s to give.” And I already knew it. They let me finish off the box of shells until the sun was gone.

In some ways, I felt bad for grandpa. His father’s shadow was long, deep: cast by a man whose life was framed by a passion for serving and loving God and others. But, at least in some measure, my grandpa was his father’s son. Early in his life, his dad had scattered his presence across the wilds as well: clawing his own restless way out of the Dakotas into the bowels of copper mines and whiskey bottles before the irresistible call of God’s grace encircled him. His presence still looms large generations after, over my own life, and the lives of my children. I feel his hand on my head all these years since. But grandpa held onto his wandering ways far longer, and came to the table of grace much later, than his father did.

My father had a knife: A black-handled, full-tang knife. Sharp as the day is long, laid in a black leather sheath, emblazoned with his riveted initials. He won it at a county fair. I coveted it. My mother was scared to death of it, and my father was not yet ready to surrender it. One day, on a visit north, my grandfather accompanied us on a trip into town. In a hardware store, I found a case full of knives. “You like those?” grandpa asked. I nodded. “Which one?” I considered the question hard. There were Swiss Army knives, replete with magnifying glasses, saws, and awls; there were pearl-handled beauties. But my eyes wandered to the big bowie knife most like my dad’s. He grinned. “You like that one?” I nodded again. At the checkout, my mother’s eyes were filled with a mix of anger and horror as my grandfather rang it up for me. “Better get a sheath,” he said, tossing an unfinished leather beauty near the register. Again, those knowing glances, this time mom to dad. I still remember dad’s wry smile as we left the store. I felt like I was ten feet tall.

One night, I was still awake when I should have been asleep. It was cold. The snow was thick, and battered the windows. The wind found its way past the door frame up to the edge of my quilt. The grown-ups were awake with their coffee, their theological debates, their laughter. But soon, the silences grew. The conversation turned to recollection. I heard my mother’s voice, describing the state in which they found my father so many years before, abandoned, forsaken by my own grandpa, my unknown grandma. Dad was the oldest boy. He remembered. He had been so neglected, so hungry, so malnourished, that his body had begun to feed upon itself for sustenance. His own teeth crumbled under the weight of the neglect, and crumble still.

The next day, at breakfast, I watched my grandpa, spinning another one of his tales over cereal and pancakes. I stared at his face; glanced at my father as he circled the room; my uncle as he paced. Why was this man here, at the table? How could he be? Later, that summer, my father and I packed up the Palamino camper, and backed up the LTD to hitch it up. I watched my dad, his father, as they said their goodbyes. They embraced. 

One day, my father’s family gathered at the old farm. It was a last goodbye. Everybody knew it, but nobody spoke it. One of my aunts – one of my father’s surrogate mothers – was going to die. Every black sheep and good child was aware and present for the goodbye. Grandpa started a fire in the field nearby, the brim of his hat shining gold as the noonday sun. He sang a rendition of Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” while my cousins and my Uncle Larry laughed and looked on. Then quiet. “I can sing like an angel,” he said. “Like an angel. It doesn’t mean a thing. Not a thing.” Tears ran down his face and into his beard, as he quietly began the first verse of “How Great Thou Art.” 

Everything I’ve learned about forgiveness I’ve learned from my dad.

Everything I’ve learned about grace I’ve learned from my grandpa.

It was years, so many years later, that I found myself beneath a trestle in the bitter and the snow in Manitoba. I half-dreamt the sound of piano and hymn in the dark and the wind; I half-dreamt my grandfather’s tear-streaked face in the firelight, and my hands found his face. We leaned together, there, and our begging, giving eyes wandered up between the dark timbers and the stars to God.