I learned about love not in hard gulps, but in easy sips. I first glimpsed love not in bright displays, but in the warmth of two laughing blue eyes—the eyes of my grandfather, Pa-pa.
He smelled of tobacco juice and Old Spice; he felt like cool overall buckles and warm earth. He looked wrinkled and tanned and so very, very tall; he walked straight and lean behind a mule and a plow.
The land that he loved has grown up in briars and pine; the children he loved have grown up and scattered like a froth of dandelion seeds. Now there is no homeplace to go home to, but when I think of love, I think of his boots scraping mud on the back steps. I remember the sound of his Jew’s harp playing “Old Rugged Cross” on breezy Sunday mornings. I go back to the hard strength of his arms wrapped around me in his soft feather bed.
When I think of love, I go back home to Pa-pa, to the special places he touched in my heart.
Pa-pa understood that children have a fragile dignity. When I spoke to him, he stooped to hear me, squatted close to the earth and pulled me closer to him.
I was maybe three years old when he pulled me close as I whispered, “I wet my pants, Pa-pa.”
Babies wet their pants, I had been told time and time again. If my pants were wet again, I would be forced to wear a diaper when my cousins came to visit, to be ridiculed as a “baby.”
He hugged me and smiled. He removed the wet pants, washed them in a chicken trough and hung them on the line to dry. Just before my mother came home from work, he returned the clean pants to my drawer. And no one was the wiser, except for me. I learned that love and compassion and forgiveness are one and the same.
We lived with our grandparents, and our cousins came to visit often. Though not wealthy, they had more things than my parents were able to give to us. Pa-pa could not give us those same things, but he gave us what he knew. He carved toy cars from squash; he showed us where to collect maypops; he made us teeth from watermelon rind; he made us a swing from rope and a notched plank. He pulled his money from a knotted handkerchief and bought me a cookie as big as his hand and coconut candy with three rows of color.
And no one was the wiser, except for me. I learned that a richly generous heart cannot be impoverished by circumstances alone.
Pa-pa feared snakes and thunderstorms, fires and cars. When we walked to the mailbox together, he would not permit me to go as far as the road with him. I waited at a spot several yards back. His grown daughter had been killed by a car the year before I was born, and he was determined that nothing like that would ever again happen to anyone he loved.
And how he loved me.
Snakes, he cut into several pieces so that they couldn’t jump back together. During thunderstorms, he wrapped us in feather mattresses and turned off the electricity. If my father thoughtlessly tossed a cigarette on the grass, Pa-pa would crush it out with his boot.
And no one was the wiser, except for me. I learned that, as best you can, you protect those you love...when you can.
Pa-pa’s bright blue eyes held a child’s sparkling playfulness. He showed me the best places to hide for hide and seek. Unfortunately, he shared those same places with all of his grandchildren. Pa-pa gave me my own sack for picking cotton; he blew bubbles from a spool with the wonder and delight of a child. He rode me in the wheelbarrow on a pile of leaves, and at night he told ghost stories by firelight. He tied a string on the hind leg of a June bug and laughed at how we dodged the bug when it flew near our faces. Then I watched him turn the June bug loose.
No one was the wiser, except maybe me. I learned that happiness is not measured in hours of polite smiles but in moments of laughter.
Then I was 5, and my whole world collapsed. My parents bought a house in town, and I was to move away with them. I was to leave the circle of strong oaks and the safe places I knew in my grandfather’s house, to leave my Pa-pa and Ma-ma and my playhouse and everything I loved and knew. I was to move with my parents, and there were no words for my fear or my sadness.
On the morning of the move, I stole from the house after breakfast and hid in the best of all the hide-and-seek places Pa-pa had shown me—inside the boat, under the shed behind the cotton house. I made myself as little as I could and hid quietly under the seat of the boat.
I heard my mother call me. I did not move. Later, I heard the engine of the car. Once I was sure my parents had gone, I emerged from the boat. Sitting in the dirt, beside the boat, was Pa-pa.
“You’ll have to go with them,” he said to me softly as he stood up and brushed dirt from the back of his overalls with his hands. “They’ll be back for supper.”
I looked at him, not believing what I heard him say. He was supposed to be my ally, to hide me and protect me. I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—believe him. He reached for me, and I felt the stubble on his face against my cheek. Then I felt something wet on my face.
“You’ll come back to visit all the time,” he tried to reassure me, and he held me so tight the buckle on his overalls cut into my chest. “You’ll see. You’ll come back to play with me all the time...but tonight, you’ll have to go with them.”
Together, under the shed behind the cotton house, we cried, me in the boat and him standing beside me, holding me close. I cried in a desperate despair that no words could ease. He cried in a desperate despair that he could not keep me from hurting.
And no one was the wiser, except for me. I learned that love can’t always stop the pain. But someone who loves you stays with you through the pain...even when it hurts to be there.
Pa-pa taught me about love with no words, no holding back, no strings attached. And what he taught me was enough.
Even yet.
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