Gone from My Sight

My maternal grandfather died this weekend, and the fourth of July holiday-weekend is an appropriate send-off for this Navy veteran, I find myself thinking.  When I once described her dad as "a character," my mom agreed and noted, "Both your grandfathers are characters."  And now both are gone, and I can't come up with the words quite yet to express how jarring that feels.  . . My time as someone's grandkid also passing away.  My grandfather would have turned ninety next month.  This is my ever-present-Yankees-cap grandfather.  The grandfather with the most beautiful, looped, delicate script-handwriting.  The grandfather who's always somehow reminded me of Elton John.  :)  The grandfather who would embarrass my grandmother by loudly and realistically neighing like a horse in the middle of Target to get her attention while she shopped.  :)  The grandfather who would add big-nosed "Kilroy was here"-style drawings to the backs of his letters' envelopes for me.  ♥  

A strict Baptist who had been raised on a large dairy farm, he never cursed; A man he encountered at work one day so angered him, he felt enraged enough to let some baaaaad words fly finally, the story goes, but all my grandfather managed to spit out was, "You--you--you applehead!"   He was always the first to laugh at himself, and no one has ever described him without using some variant of silly, goofball, or ham to do so.  During an Easter 2001 visit, he stood at my mom's side at the kitchen table late at night as she blearily tried to think of a final few rhyming clues for the next morning's egg-hunt before going to bed, and we were soon dissolving in giggles as his suggestions got sillier and sillier.  "How 'bout this, Chris?" he would begin--and she would cry out, "Stop!" and be laughing already before he even continued--"Your next prize might be under the tree.  If it is chocolate, leave it there for me!"  And as we all grew more tired and punchy, his helpful rhymes included gems along the lines of, "You think there's treasure in this yard?  Well, there's not, Kid.  Life is HARD!"  :) 

He served eight years in the Navy and was one of the helmsmen of the USS Wasp.  I'm hoping one of my aunts or uncles remembers to bring his official Navy portrait to the services this week so I can finally see it and take a picture of it.  He looks "just gorgeous" in it, in Aunt Laurie's words, so young and blue-eyed.  (Update:  They remembered.  ↓  ♥)

My grandmother remains, after having had him in her life more than sixty years.  She herself turned ninety this year.  The week ahead for all of us--Mom and Aunt Laurie have three brothers and two other sisters, there are more than twenty grandchildren, and now so many great-grandchildren too--will be heartbreaking.  Aunt Laurie, Mom, and I fondly remember Grammy's shock when my no-dancing-permitted grandfather led her out onto the dance floor at my older brother's wedding.  Life has its sweet surprises too, after all. 

Everyone's stories of  my grandfather are funny and endearing ones, told and retold.  One of Mom's favorites is of how during a family camping trip as a kid, she woke in the middle of the night to the whoops and hollers of my grandfather running around outside the tent chasing raccoons away from the family's food-stash in his underwear.  :) 

Decades later, upon first meeting my dad's Italian-born grandmother, who lived next door to us when I was little, he kindly accepted the glass of homemade wine she offered him since he did not know how to refuse her politely, especially since Great-Grandma spoke no English.  With the intention of getting it over with quickly, he downed the glass and smiled his "thanks" at Great-Grandma, but she misinterpreted his quick drinking and pleasant smile as a sign that he was a big drinker and would like more, so she refilled his glass--and refilled it--and refilled it yet again--and my sweet grandfather ended up near-drunk for the first time in his life (and smiling all the more the longer this went on, of course) before she finally understood that he really had had enough.  :)  That story is still my favorite.  Mom always loved to tease him about it, and he would laugh harder than anybody when she did.  ♥

He loved children and could always be found at reunions and get-togethers wherever they were gathered, much preferring playing like a kid to visiting over coffee with the rest of the adults. "Well, he IS just a big kid," one of my aunts has always added whenever this has been brought up. 

Last year, my uncle Dan arranged for my grandfather to be gifted with an honor flight--Bless!--and accompanied him to Washington, D.C. where he was recognized for his military service.

It is one photo from that trip that keeps making me cry this weekend--one of my always-sweet but almost-always-smiling grandfather standing tall to offer a crisp and quite solemn salute.  

For whatever reason, the salute--just like the homemade pies after my other grandfather died--is what keeps breaking me this weekend.  It comes to mind and I dissolve again.  We're talking about my grandfather, though--he of the applehead-curse and Kilroy drawings--so not to worry:  There is always a reason to smile again soon enough.

♥

Nonno

I didn't understand when I was a kid that Dad called his grandfather Nonno because it is the Italian word for that family member.  I thought he was saying "No-No," and I just assumed his grandfather had earned that nickname by always telling his grandchildren "No" to this and "No" to that.  It is so funny how children come up with their own explanations for things.  Dad remembers his dear Nonno as a quiet man who loved his family, his garden, his grape arbors, his walks in the woods, his honey bees, and all the animals on his and my great-grandmother's small property.  They had goats, cows, horses, rabbits, ducks, and I don't remember what-else.  I remember Great-Grandma, I remember the house and yard and apple tree and back porch and part of the barn, and I still vaguely remember the rabbits--I have a vague memory of being held up by someone so I could reach into their wired hutch--but Dad's Nonno died three years before I was born. 

Nonno had been an Italian Prisoner of War during WWI, and I never think of him without remembering family lore that this man who had loved to hunt from the time he was a child could never touch a gun again after his time in the army.  His wartime experiences left him both hard-of-hearing and gun-shy.  He was shaken by loud noises in general as a result of his service, which makes the few photos I have of him--Nonno and Great-Grandma outside their barn with one of their horses, Nonno and Great-Grandma sitting together in the kitchen, Nonno with the rest of the family at Christmas dinner, Nonno and Dad together outside--all the more poignant to me.  There is some satisfaction in seeing that although most of this man's life was not what anyone would consider easy, he enjoyed years of needed peace and of good company--company who would speak as loudly as necessary, in English and Italian--and simple meals and vegetable gardens and playful goats and grandchildren.  Veterans Day is an American holiday, and Nonno was an Italian service member, but I think of him on this day every year, and his story, with its silences both inflicted and restorative, reminds me of the sacrifices made by so many.

April Violets and October Anniversaries

Today my parents celebrate their forty-third wedding anniversary.  In 1966, one of the young men my dad was serving with in Vietnam mentioned in a letter to his kid sister back home that one of his Air Force buddies could use some extra mail.  My fourteen-year-old mom dutifully put pen to paper for her big brother, my dad soon wrote back, and four years of Air Mail later, it was their matchmaker, Dad's friend and Mom's brother, who served as Best Man at their October 24th wedding.  "Some of my best work," my uncle brags of their union.  In four more years, my parents would name their first child after dear Uncle Dan.  As I like to point out to my mom, who is still upset that they don't have better pictures from their wedding day, her marriage turned out even if her photographs didn't.  

 

Before the autumn wedding and baby Daniel, though, there were those four years of letters, care packages, and rare visits home on-leave.  "I would complete soak all my stationery and envelopes in Yardley's April Violets," Mom always mentions when she talks about their correspondence.  She wrote my dad a letter a day.  Dad, for his part, sent letter, pictures, and love poems--"And your dad was really a poet," Mom always adds at this point in her reminiscences.  I come by my love of letter-writing naturally, I can't help but think, just as so many of "[their] songs" from the mid-late 1960s--"Crimson and Clover," "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," and "My Girl," to name just a few--had become my own favorites by the time I was eleven.  My parents finally saw each other in-person for the first time during one of my dad's visits home.  High school student Mom anxiously waited at her parents' window in New York while my dad made the drive up from Pennsylvania.  "When I saw him coming down the sidewalk in his dress uniform. . . !"  Mom still gushes at the memory, blushingly trailing off each time she shares it.  "And I'm telling you, Vally," she always goes on, "I knew right away that he was a keeper:  My brother Eric was just a baby then and was playing with his toy cars, and your dad got right down on the floor beside him and started racing the cars around with him."  (How a man treats the very young and very old tells you all you need to know about a man's character, my mother advised me ages ago.) 

Perfumed mail, The Big Chill soundtrack of their pen pal days, and matchbox car races can make it all seem much more lighthearted than it was, of course.  "Come home safe" is written in Mom's teenage penmanship across the backs of so many of her old photos to Dad.  The scene in Forrest Gump that shows a safely-home-from-Vietnam Forrest reunited with his beloved Jenny is the one that always gets my parents, and being in the room with them while they watch uniform-clad Forrest and long-haired Jenny embrace after his years in the service almost feels like too personal a Mom and Dad Moment to intrude upon.  Their own love story didn't have to turn out this well, and we all know it.  Dad doesn't decorate family members' graves on Memorial Day without remembering the classmate with whom he enlisted and without whom he made it home.  

Tonight my parents will exchange cards and maybe catch dinner and a movie, while two of their grandchildren daydream about next week's Halloween costumes and another grandchild waits a few more weeks to be born.  The letters that started it all, still tucked into their red and blue-bordered Air Mail envelopes, have been carefully packed away since 1970 in my parents' bedroom closet, faintly flower-scented testaments to the wonder of true love. 

♥

We Who Here Read

From the plaque of a favorite local monument:  "With humility, gratitude, and remembrance, we honor forever those our neighbors who gave their lives. . .that we who here read might live in these United States in peace with both God and man."  ♥

Memorial Day 2012

'A pie for Mike's parents this morning.  I talked with my parents last night and know they are visiting cemeteries today, as they faithfully do this weekend every year, to plant flowers around loved ones' graves. That my own dad was welcomed home from the service in 1969 with a family party and a cake in his honor and not with a graveside American flag and red, white, and blue Petunias is something I am more grateful for the older I get. And that Memorial Day seems to have become appreciated more for stores' sales and a three-day weekend than for the sacrifices of those in our military is something that disturbs me more each year. Thank you to those who have served and who are serving now, and a thank you to their families, as well.

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

On Veterans Day, I am thinking of Dad, who served in Vietnam with my mom's big brother. Dad and Uncle Dan lived in the same Air Force barracks and became good friends. Uncle Dan mentioned to my mom in a letter home that a guy he was serving with was lonely and would appreciate some mail. Mom and Dad remained pen pals throughout Dad's entire time in the service. When Dad came home after his required four years, he and Mom got married--and celebrated their 41st wedding anniversary two weeks ago. Uncle Dan, who also made it home safely, still reminds them from time to time that they can thank him for their marriage. That is a happy Vietnam story, and yes, we can all thank Uncle Dan. There are other things to thank him and my dad for, as well, of course, although "thank you" is too little in comparison with years of sacrifice, lost friends, and the dark nights and nightmares. 

My grandmother once told me something her brother Al had recounted to his family about his experiences in the army in World War I, and it still gives me chills. Uncle Al and the men in his unit were lying in wait on a hillside, still in the silence and straining to hear any movement, when they suddenly saw a line of what Grandma described to me as plumes marching over the hill toward them. Uncle Al had explained that the German soldiers at that time wore helmets with a distinctive spike or plume on top and later told his family that he had never been as terrified as he was in that moment, seeing that line of helmet-tops appear. Uncle Al also came home safely. One of his daughters, likely now in her seventies, proudly sent me his army photo above when I asked years ago.

My grandfather's youngest brother's war was World War II, where he served in the Marine Corp. Amongst the lifetime of personal papers, photographs, and paper ephemera of my grandparents' that my parents and I long ago had to sort through was a yellowed wall calendar with a note written onto one day's square marking Uncle Mike's departure for boot camp. Uncle Mike lived into his 80s.

A favorite old Veterans Day comic strip from Lynn Johnston:
(click to enlarge)

  

Dad and Uncle Dan and Uncle Al and Uncle Mike--and Uncle Warren, who served in the Navy, and Great-Grandpa, who was an Italian POW during the first World War, and Papa Lee, who was one of the helmsmen of the USS Wasp--and veterans everywhere: Thank you and happy Veterans Day.  ♥

Parking Lot Mural

A favorite local mural  ~  "The Kiss," of course