Something My Grandfather Used to Say

 You have to live for the future ‘cause the past will eat you alive.  That's something my grandfather used to say, sitting on the porch swing he'd installed himself on the day he retired from the postoffice.  He usually had his plain blue trucker had pulled down over his eyes as he leaned back on the swing, gently rocking back and forth, the lulling creaks and groans of the wooden porch in agreement with him.  I'd sit there with him, sometimes right next to him but usually on the stool he'd made years ago in his wood shop and set proudly by the front door.  Never underestimate the power of what your two hands can build, he'd tell me, teaching me how to use the tools as soon as he deemed me old enough.  

I grew up two doors down from where my grandparents lived -- Jeb and Marta to everyone else on the block, even my mother who was their child.  They seemed to prefer it that way, this sort of banished hierarchy, this removal of labels.  They were just Jeb and Marta, after all.  Have been all our lives, my grandfather would say.  While he had done a stint in the Army before joining the postal service and lived every day as if he were a solider in some capacity or other Marta -- my grandmother -- had gone to law school and even spent a few years as a judge.  I was in awe of them.  They were my everything.  Nothing about them seemed to be compatible except for how much they loved each other and I spent every day of my childhood hoping I'd grow up to be so lucky.

My mother, she wasn't so lucky.  My father, he left before my third birthday, so outside of some old photos, I can't say much about him, except I'm pretty sure he existed.  My stepfather was what my grandfather called "unreliable," but, even so, my mother stayed married to him.  He wasn't a bad guy, really, just unfocused -- that's the word my mother would use.  She was mostly the one who kept down her job as a preschool teacher and a clerk at grocery store in town.  As soon as I was old enough, I started mowing lawns for our neighbors and walking dogs sometimes, too.  When I was sixteen, I got a job at the grocery store along with my mother while my stepfather mostly drank cheap beer and lazily told us he'd quit or gotten fired from whatever job he'd just started.  I loved my mother and admired her strength but had a hard time understanding why she stayed married to my stepfather.  

She doesn't want the stigma of divorce, my grandmother had said once in response to my out loud musings on the subject.  

I had to look "stigma" up in the dictionary.  A mark of disgrace.  Well, I'm not sure my mother's decision to stay married to my stepfather alleviated her of that.

I spent most of my free time down at my grandparents' house, anyway.  My grandfather did most of the cooking and made his own pasta and sauce from scratch.  He taught me how when I was old enough and then I'd help him.  He taught me how to make sourdough bread and fried chicken and how to slice onions so I wouldn't cry.  He taught me how to use the washing machine and the dryer and how to replace a fuse.  He said, Some men might not do these kinds of things around the house, things like cooking and laundry, but the Army taught me how to do these things.  It's patriotic to do these things.  I nodded.  I repeated what he said to my stepfather and my friends at school.  Mostly, I got stares in return, except for the moments when I'd say something like this in front of my friends' moms.  They always tousled my hair and grinned at me like I was the most charming specimen of child they'd ever encountered.

Maybe I was.

But only because that's how my grandfather taught me to be.

I asked him once, though, when I was in college what he meant when he said you have to live for the future ‘cause the past will eat you alive.  I must've asked him at just the right moment because a tear came to his eye and he said, well, I imagine you're old enough now, and then he told me stories about when he was in the Army, right in the heart of the Vietnam War.  He told me about friends he'd made in his unit -- about some who'd fought bravely and died, some who'd deserted, some who he'd kept in touch with.  He talked for hours that night, us two, out on the front porch, drinking beer, and me learning my grandfather's history.  A few weeks later, he asked me to come over and this time one of his old war buddies was there and they told even more stories -- some somber, some that left them crying with laughter.  

See, you have to live for the future ‘cause the past will eat you alive because if all I did was remember these stories from the war in Vietnam, well... my grandfather's voice trailed off.   

I understood.

I never went to war myself, but, even so, my grandfather did -- so I understood.

First line by Lindy

2023

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