I grew up with a dad that is not very lovey or very nice. He's bipolar and wasn't on medication. He was SO much fun when he was on a manic high - we'd do crazy stuff like load into the car and blow off school to be at the coast for a couple days, camping in the middle of November at the mountains. Or, we'd make frequent trips to Winchell's donuts on 72nd and Sandy at 2am for crullers. Those were fun times. And his name is Tom.
However, with manic behavior, the good comes with the bad. He is never allowed alone with my kids. He scares me enough that I have nightmares about him. As I see him, in his 70s and ailing, I wonder how much longer he'll be here. And how I'll feel - if I feel anything - when he leaves us.
So, when I was little, I thought all dads were like this - basically cool and nutty and crazy. Then, when I was a toddler, I spent most of a summer with my great-grandfather, Jabez Shovel-Babb (born in 1884, died in 1985). Dad called him Jay-who. He had so many stories to tell - his older sister and their mother had tickets to take the titanic to the states, didn't go because my great aunt had the chickenpox. I may not have been born but for that because he wasn't born yet. He talked about his life as a trolly conductor in Portland, watching the city grow from the 20s when he moved here. Remembering neighborhoods like Lents, Sellwood and Madison as stops on his trolley. Forever, I will think of the Portlan transit system as his. It doesn't beling to us, but to those who came before.
He had an affinity for bananas and lived to be 101 - he swore that 2 bananas a day and all the butterscotch candies you could eat lead him to a long and GOOD life. He smiled a lot and had the most infectious laugh when you heard it - which was rare. He was softspoken and demure, slow to talk and slower to raise his voice.
I was smitten with him - he let me crawl on his lap (Dad never so much as hugged me) and told me stories of England and the coal mines and how difficult life was when my great aunt and my grandfather were growing up. He gave me coins from his pocket that were so foreign to the US coins I would find on the street. We were very, very poor (pancakes and jello for dinner, free cheese... food stamps was too embarrassing for mom so we'd go hungry and she wouldn't have to stand in line and be embarrassed.) I adored every minute I spent with him. When we had the ice storms in the 70s, hed sleep on a makeshift bed in our living room, next to the fire, and I would sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag, piled in with brothers and cousins and the odd neighbor. Nothing felt better than those nights, watchig the transformers blow up, having cocoa that mom cooked on a campstove on the front porch. I never wanted it to end, never wanted to go back to a life of grade school where I excellend and felt mired in the mud, all at once.
My beloved Grampa died when I was 12. His funeral was one of the saddest days of my life. First of all, they put all this icky makeup on him - he looked like a clown. He would have hated that! Then, they dressed him in a fancy, satin suit and slicked his hair back. My great aunt asked me to kiss him (eeew - dead man cooties!) The way I remember him was very thin grey hair blowing around his head as he got off Tri-Met #12 on his way to tea with mom. Pale as a ghost - the man had that parchment skin that older people get. He was 101 for goodness sakes!
And his suits were tailored in England (he was born in Cornwall), with a special inner pocket, silk lining, and every detail done to the nines. I loved his style. The man was classier than anyone I could possibly imagine. I wanted his suit coats so bad that, when I got them from my aunt as a rememberance, I wore one EVERY DAY throughout high school. Got a nickname from that. Not repeating it here - it still haunts me in some circles. It was the 80s, after all...
So, my grampa died. But at home that day, after the bad organ music and me asking everyone to sign the guestbook - and all the comments of "You're becoming such a nice young lady" and getting super-hugged by one to many slightly creepy, distant male relative, I found something. I found a half penny from 1902. It was in my room, tucked safely in a shoe where nobody would find it. He hadn't been by in a while - had he left it there and I just didn't wear them? Had my mom or my dad done it to make me feel better? My heart died a little bit that day, it was the last time a man put arms around me and loved me without expectations. And I kept the coin to remember the cool things he'd taught me (how to make your tea, how to eat a scone, what bus gets you where in the city - he never drove, what really makes a man into a man.)
For obvious reason, he stayed dead. Any alternative coould be weird. Only, the coins kept coming. A couple people who are very important to me died one day in 1990, only I didn't know it for a few days. Two coins showed up in my shower - clogging the drain. Had to have the plumber out to fix it. He yelled at me for throwing British money down the drain, like I was nuts. I just smiled - until later, when I realized the exact moment they showed up would have been the exact moment of unfathomable loss.
When both my children were born, I had coins in my hospital room. For every big event in my life, there was a reminder of him. I'd think of what it would feel like to get a soft and getle hug at a sad moment, to have someone pat me on the head and say "No bother, girlie, no bother at all" and I'd wonder where we go when we're not here anymore. And yet, he was there.
Last time, it was when Jessie, my dog, died pretty suddenly in the spring. With all the other chaos in my life, I wasn't sure I could keep up the front of everything being OK. I came home to an 1898 ha'penny and a butterscotch candy on my computer keyboard. Really. A fresh one, not musty and old and smelling like dead guy. Glad there were no bananas, though... that could have been weird.
