i miss being old

This is The Favorite by Georgios Iakovidis. Today, after a hard day, I miss my grandfathers. I'm not sure if you had them, but mine were great. They weren't perfect by any means - in fact, often they were downright awnry - but something about them, maybe their smell, made me feel wiser for knowing them.

Yep, it's definitely the smell. Grandaddy (my father's father) lived 5 minutes up the road from me. He always wore Arimas aftershave and a plaid dress shirt, often with a mesh trucker cap (before they were cool). These clothes smelled of Arimas mixed with sweat and dust, which was the constant companion of anyone who attended the local flea-market religiously and refinished old furniture and tools. Grandaddy was quiet, yet he always had a hearty laugh and a good story ready. Through him I learned to fish, to cut grass, to buy things cheap and haggle for them if they weren't. He taught me to dress sharp, and to keep a handkerchief in my pocket. Jen, if you ever read this, you can thank Grandaddy for that handkerchief. Grandaddy was also a quiet pillar of our church, a deacon with a passion for going to visit people in the hospital who never seemed to speak out loud except when he was called on, at which point he would deliver the calmest and most collected speech of anyone in the building. There was almost something magical about him.

Papa (my mom’s father) was a rascal. Tested by harsh winters he endured as a naval mechanic at the South Pole, he was often bitter and cynical, speaking of things he had no knowledge of as if he were a Harvard professor, and with the assurance that he was right. Yet he was a pillar in his own right, the lynchpin that held a chaotic family together through the hardest struggles one must endure. I said this at his funeral, and it is no less true today than the first time I spoke it. I remember Papa’s hands. If Grandaddy’s aftershave was Arimas, Papa’s was sawdust. As a side job, Papa cut wood for people all over their small town. I’ve never seen someone that old in that good shape, regardless of what the doctors told him. He would, day after long day, haul wood from wherever to the side of his house, split logs three times his size with an assortment of chainsaws and aged machinery, and then take it back again. His language was peppered with bits of wisdom wound in jokes and orders, like “Eat your beans (or rice) – they put hair on your chest”. At that age, I dreaded the eventual hair that would put me at odds with the female-attracting portion of my gender, so much so that I shaved it off for years. You’d be proud of me, Papa.

That last sentence gives me pause, though. Would he? Would either of them, especially if they knew all of me - the parts that they themselves wouldn’t admit to anyone they had? I can be cynical with the best of them, and selfish to boot. Grandaddy’s quiet nature fell on deaf (or already talking) ears – I long to be someone who will shut up long enough to listen again. And Grandaddy had long bouts with depression, too. I never understood them until I started having them.

Look at the picture. A child has no reason to learn about pipes, and her parents probably weren’t jumping for joy at this newfound fascination. But that’s what grandpas are for. Somehow, getting old pushes them past the wall of being correct, or safe, or accepted. It gives them wisdom, the wisdom that comes from seeing things from the other side, from knowing that life is closing in on them. Grandaddy was an artist, and his pictures hung around his house – though no one else knew. Papa wasn’t great with money (and this illustrates that) but he bought a motorcycle at 70 and swore he’d ride it if it killed him. And he never stopped dreaming of that WWII Jeep he always wanted.

Part of me misses being old. Not the old of authority, or power, or status. No, I miss what I haven’t tasted yet – holding hands with my wife and telling her she’s still the prettiest thing I’ve ever laid eyes on, smelling the cold of the morning and the age of my things, teaching my grandson in days what it took me a lifetime to master. To look on life and say it is good.