Grandpa S.

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Pixie

I’ve been struggling with how to write this post since Thursday afternoon, when I learned that my father’s father had passed away in his sleep the night before. I wasn’t ready, though I should have been. He’d been in and out of the hospital several times in recent months but, somehow, I thought there would be more time. I will always regret that I wasn’t a better granddaughter to him but am grateful to have been able to see him only a couple of weeks ago and tell him that I loved him. I didn’t get to know him as well as either of us would have liked. He must have had a tough time growing up because he never spoke of his childhood or family from his past. It was as if his life began with Grandma and he often lamented that we lived so far away, wishing his children and grandchildren lived within walking distance so he could see us more than a few times a year.

He was a business owner who practiced affirmative action before it existed. He believed strongly in having at least basic mechanical skills and proudly took me to the hardware store when I moved out on my own to buy me an orange toolbox and a basic set of tools, all of which I still own and use. He was a master napper throughout his life, an endless source of endearing entertainment for the rest of us. He enjoyed gumshoe detective stories and even tried his hand at writing them in his retirement. Grandpa was a man who lived to work, who needed to feel useful to those he loved. If I learned little else from him, I understand that need very deeply and wish I had given him more opportunities to fulfill it.

We used to talk about the work I was doing on the basement, ever so slowly turning it into a more useful space. A couple of years ago he gave me the plans for his workbench when I mentioned I wanted to turn the back end of the basement into a workshop. I hope to build it finally this year, so I will always have a useful space from him, in honor of him.

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Grandpa K.

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Pixie

After little more than 96 years, my mother’s father shuffled off this mortal coil today. Unassuming, kind, generous, intelligent, well educated, artistic, and funny, I have yet to meet anyone more devoted to family than he was. While I am sure that everyone on the planet would agree that he was a good person, you had to be paying attention to really see just how amazing he was because he was so quiet about everything he did. He had a streak of honor that ran a mile wide and always strove to do the right thing because doing anything else would just be crazy. He couldn’t have cared less about recognition. For Grandpa, it was all about love.

And Grandpa had a lot of love to give. It was a subtle thing, rarely expressed directly beyond a wink and a smile, but I felt it every day and never doubted it. If you were watching, you could see it in the things he did. Everything he did was done out of love, either directly or as a means to the betterment of something else. Sometimes it was both, as embodied by the impressive garden he maintained over the years, feeding both his love of the outdoors and the desire to provide for his family.

There are so many things I could point to that remind me of Grandpa, but I think what I’m going to miss the most is his laugh. He had a wonderfully silly sense of humor and an infectious chuckle that got a lot of use. One of the traits we shared was a capacity to laugh at ourselves, so that laughter was heard often at the dinner table as we discussed things we’d learned during our day.

Family was everything to him and I am so, so grateful to have been a part of it. He taught me so much about happiness and how to be a good person just by being himself, lessons I am still learning. I hope that at the end of my life I can look back on it and imagine that he would have been almost as proud of what I did with it as I am of his. I love you, Grandpa. Forever.

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Adventure! (Part the Third)

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Pixie

If you’re looking for something to add to your bucket list, I have a suggestion. Archery by torchlight. It’s pretty awesome.

Having spent the previous day on volunteering and orientation, much of the next was spent at the archery range with my 30 pound youth size recurve bow and a dozen brand new arrows that I had spent the last month making. Having started shooting a few days after beginning the arrows, it was my first time shooting out of doors. Luckily, it was a beautiful day with no wind to pull at the arrows which allowed me to keep the focus on basic aim and fun. And, thanks to the creativeness of the folks sponsoring the shoots, much fun was had.

The Captain didn’t expect me to actually hit anything, of course, but every able body was needed if we were going to succeed in overtaking the castle and unseating the scheming lordling pretender within. Without hesitation, I had taken up my little bow and a sheaf of new arrows and stepped up to the line. After less than a month of practice, I was well aware that calling me an archer would be generous, but then my job wasn’t really to hit anything so much as to make the enemy duck. Still, if a lucky arrow should find an obliging target, I was willing to make the effort. Lacing up my borrowed arm guard, I stole glances at the other archers. Many of the other new recruits were clearly excited and impatient to get started now that the course of action was decided. Some chatted, some fretted over their gear, the wizened veterans merely waited.

When one is using a child’s bow – instead of that a trained archer where the draw begins at three to four times the one in my hands – shooting at a castle a hundred yards away is more of an art than a science, really. With so little power behind my arrows, I was forced to aim for the sky in the general direction of the dark cloud of others flying across the moat and hope for the best. Mine fell short, as I had known they would, some landing in the water surrounding the castle and wounding something large and unseen in the murky depth. Had it not been for the sudden and unexpected thrashing in the water, we might never have known it was there until too late. With luck on our side, we quickly dispatched the creature and advanced toward the stone walls.

Forming a line roughly 20 yards from the castle, we began shooting arrows into the narrow windows where we could see the shadows of the archers within as they took cover against the onslaught, trying vainly to gain an opportunity to strike back. though still challenging, the distance was much more familiar to me and I got at least one arrow through, though two sailed over the walls and impaled themselves upon an unsuspecting tree in the courtyard. Then, just as we were about to overtake the castle, one of the rearward scouts spotted an approaching armada on the beach behind it, unfortunate allies of the pretender, with ships spaced at 10 yard intervals as they approached. The Captain sent the archers down to the shore to sink as many as we could before they landed and these, at least, we dispatched handily. And so, with a loud cry and much cheering, the day was finally won.

Or so we thought. Those we found inside the castle walls, alive and dead, were clearly not enough to have accounted for the quality of the defense, nor was the lordling himself anywhere to be found. He had fled with his most loyal retainers, only to return after dark seeking revenge, but The Captain was well seasoned and we were prepared. With little more light than a pair of torches behind us and the full moon above to break the darkness, it was nevertheless enough to betray where they could be found, flashing across bared steel as they advanced. Aiming as best we could, we loosed arrow after arrow into the darkness, listening for the telltale sounds of our enemies being struck. We felled them all, the poor bastards, a few of them miraculously struck down by my own hand. With that, the day was, at last, well and truly won. And so, I went to a well earned last night of rest before beginning the journey back to my homeland.

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