A short memory; almost a dream came to me a few days ago.
It was in that sweet moment before the day begins and sleep was still trying to hang onto my body...
I was maybe four years old.
Sitting on my Grandpa's lap as he read me a book.
It wasn't the first time, but it would be the last.
It was perhaps Dr. Seuss, but I'm not sure.
I remember the bright colors of the characters on the pages.
Short sentences. Maybe six or eight words was all.
I remember the light from outside, spilling down on us through small, rectangular windows
in a daylight basement. The short staircase across from us, leading up to the mud-room on one side and the kitchen on the other.
Grandpa's shop was out the front door, a short distance away.
There, the night before, under a tin-roof overhang we made ice-cream with a wooden bucket, a crank, rock-salt and a lot of tired arms putting in their time.
It was vanilla.
And it was good, but it took a long time for something you could get in a square box at the store, take home and eat right away. At least that's how it seemed to me, as a child.
I had learned to read myself, just a little bit, but Grandma or Grandpa reading to me
was always better, they sometimes did voices for the characters in the story.
That's the best.
As Grandpa was reading I began to notice that the story he was telling me wasn't the same as
what was printed.
On maybe the third page, I laughed and said, "Grandpa...that's not what it says."
He said, "Sure it is."
I said, "No it's not," still giggling.
He said, "How do you know?"
I said, "Because I can read some, and those aren't the words."
And he forced a smile and slowly closed the book.
"Nope," he said, "It's not the story you're reading, but it's the one I see."
He paused, looked down at the floor, and then said,
"You probably don't need Grandpa to read to you anymore, because you already know what it says."
He gently set me down off the bed, grabbed his work gloves, turned his back to me, climbed the stairs and was out the front door and headed to the barn before I even moved.
Today, I don't think that little boy was in the wrong.
Nor do I resent my Grandfather's response in any way.
He never mentioned that moment again, and we enjoyed a really wonderful relationship our whole time here on this earth.
I think the reason this memory has come back to me is less about blame or guilt and more about something else.
Way back then...nearly 60 years ago, I didn't know what happened in that moment, but I knew that
something was changing, and at the least, it was awkward.
A long time later, I discovered that my Grandpa,
in spite of all the amazing things he knew how to do...
He knew about cows: how to round them up, how to milk them, brand them, tag them, feed them, heal them, and bring them into the world.
He also knew the same about horses, pigs, ducks and chickens.
He knew about engines, all kinds: cars, tractors, trucks, mowers and could figure out why they didn't run right...and he would fix them for anyone who didn't understand what he knew.
He could fix clocks: the kind on the wall, the kind that would cuckoo, the kind that would strike a bell, sit on the mantle, stand in a corner, taller than I, or the ones that went on your wrist or in your pocket.
He could build a house, a barn, a fence or a corral.
In spite of all this that he did know...he never learned to read.
He could write his name and not much else.
When he was quite young he went to work on his parents farm, and there was no time for "schoolin'" in his life from that day forward.
So, the day he closed that book, it was an end to a thing we had shared and it never came back.
Even at four years old there was a sadness I felt and somehow I also knew Grandpa was embarrassed
but I didn't know why.
I think that is part of the lesson in this memory today.
How able am I to let go of what has been and find joy in what comes next?
He loved telling stories.
Fortunately, he kept telling them, they just didn't come out of books, they came out of his life.
AND this might be the other thing that I'm learning.
My favorite stories are the ones I hear about people themselves.
The story that they have seen and lived.
The truth of their moments.
The source of their hopes, passions and even their disappointments or rejection.
Oftentimes their story is very different than the one I thought I knew about them.
Sometimes they're revealed haltingly, with intense struggle or the converse,
they are told without any feeling at all.
I have even heard some told with laughter in what felt to be wrong places.
Places where there was pain, and nothing that was funny at all; but there it was in their voice.
A concealer, a disguise, a mask.
Dr. Seuss was a good storyteller, but honestly, my Grandpa was better.
At least I'll always think so.
And I'm incredibly thankful for the stories that were his,
The ones that came out after he put the book down.
