Memories Monday

My grandfather, Pake -- my father's father -- died while I was living and teaching in McBain, Michigan. I didn't get to go home for the funeral and never really felt like I got to say goodbye. I still sometimes expect him just to be there, in his chair by the fireplace, or working outside in the yard. Or sitting at the dining room table, laying out Scrabble tiles, getting ready for another three hour game. I learned how to play Scrabble from him, with the set they brought over from the Netherlands -- way too many vowels, not enough of certain consonants, but we managed to play in English anyway. He didn't mind playing with a kid, and he never let me win. So when I did win, it felt really great :-)

My last memory of him is of a walk we took in the woods, across the road from my parents' house in Milford. I might have been in college still, or just graduated and living at home -- that's all a little fuzzy. (Probably because I "graduated" three different semesters. And never managed to make it to a ceremony.) It was spring and there were at least three of us -- Pake, Dad and me -- John might have been along but I don't remember that. Jason was living down South still, I know that.

We were almost home and Pake stooped over to pick up something, turned it this way and that. It was a smooth roundish knob of wood, about the size of a napkin ring. Hollow, and so smooth, it was like driftwood. Laying there in the middle of the Pennsylvania woods, unlike anything around it. How did it get there? Why? My mind raced around that object, trying to make sense of it. Trying to put it in its place.

Pake looked at me and smiled. "God makes such beautiful things." Then he slipped it into his pocket and walked on towards the house.

That's always stuck with me, the thought that God made that little knob of wood. That it was beautiful, even though it was different. Out of place, and yet exactly where it needed to be, for Pake to find it. And for me to think about, all these years later.