For the final years of his life, my grandfather Ken suffered from Parkinsons disease. For me it was how it’d always been; he had the disease when I was born, and at nineteen years old I watched it finish him. The last time I saw him; he lay in a hospital bed. My dad and I made the 15-hour trip from Virginia to Florida to see him, each passing year increased the chances that it would be our last visit. We sang hymns for him and prayed with him as he lay there. Occasionally he was alert, and I pushed him out to the sunroom in his wheelchair. In recent years he was reigning balloon volleyball champion in this sunroom. But his nerves no longer fired the way his mind wanted them to. His hands were still strong though, strong like his smile. His once strong voice was all but gone, I bent over and pressed my ear to his mouth, straining to make out his words. It was easier to hold his hand when asking him a question, one squeeze for yes, two for no. This gesture was paired with a knowing gaze from his dark brown eyes. I recall the last time he squeezed my hand; it was a long squeeze. His hands warmed as blood filled the vessels, standing up on the back of his fingers, and beads of sweat pooled around the dark hair on his knuckles. At 76, his hands were still stronger than mine. I think he was a tall man, but I never could tell. When I was little, he was taller than me, but as I grew into a young man he was always sitting or stooped. His hair was dark, always carefully parted and combed to the side, held in place with a little hair gel. This memory is neatly bookended by the smell of Head and Shoulders and Hask hair tonic.
Grandpa prided himself on how well he could throw; football, frisbee, baseball, didn’t matter. He had quite an arm. In his later years of mobility, he used a walker to scoot around the house and get to the car. At this point he was unable to take care of the yardwork or himself for that matter. But he could scoot around, aided by his walker, with those tennis ball feet. I recall a time as a pre-teen that I had a football with me and he wanted to play catch. He left his walker at the edge of the concrete drive and approached me through the sandy lawn. I’m not sure how he kept from falling as he walked. His black Velcro shoes kicked up sand as he shuffled toward me. Grandpa couldn’t throw overhand anymore. But with an underhanded heave he sent it! The ball spiraled perfectly in a long arch, right to me. Now it was up to me to throw it back without him having to move from where he stood. A couple of my throws were off so I retrieved my own throws and handed the ball back to him, setting him up for another lob. This was the last time I remember his walking unassisted, and the last time he threw a ball with me.
My earliest memory of my grandfather is of his big van. My family rode in it to my 5th birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese. In those years I lived with my parents on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The van was noisy inside from the sound of the hot Florida asphalt moving beneath the tires. It was a large gold van with a wide white stripe around the middle. It had brown carpet and brown vinyl bench seats against the two side walls in the back. I was curious why there were no seatbelts. I was told that vehicles didn’t used to have them, this added to the adventure. It was a high step up into the van and my feet didn’t quite touch the floor when I sat down. At some point, that van ended up sitting and being used to store old electronics and other junk that didn’t fit into his garage.
Grandpa’s house was a typical concrete Florida home, single story with deep overhanging soffits to keep the sun and rain out. The house was tan with dark brown trim. A brown garage door opened facing a cul-de-sac street near an intercoastal canal. His front yard was half concrete drive and half grass, or maybe I should say half sand and stickers. Paying a water bill to sprinkle the lawn wasn’t one of his priorities. I didn’t dare walk around barefoot. Aside from burning my feet on the hot sand or concrete, the threat of sand spurs and fire ants was ever present. There was one palm tree in the yard, of which I marveled; we didn’t have one in our yard. Along the left side of the house was a grove of bamboo, planted as a privacy screen by a neighbor. This was a great place to catch lizards, a favorite pastime of mine as a child.
When grandpa rolled up the big garage door I could smell pine wood shavings, and WD-40. My eyes lit up when I saw all the tools, tools too dangerous for me to use. Grandpas’ pastime was woodworking, he made toys; little ducks on wheels that would flap their feet and wooden trucks and cars. He also made wooden baskets shaped like pieces of fruit. I have one of his apple baskets on the shelf in my kitchen.
Grandpa understood my desire to work in his shop with him. When I was around, he would get into his van and pull out an old computer, set it in the threshold of the garage, outside the reach of the sun, and give me a handful of tools. I sat sprawl-legged on the concrete, grains of sand biting into the backs of my legs, my scabbed knees looking up at me. He told me to take the computer apart and try to figure out what all the pieces were for. I remember learning how to turn a screwdriver; his were the wooden handled type. My small hands would sometimes slip and I’d cut them on the edges of the metal computer case. After I pulled out the disk drive, the hard drive, and the power supply, he would tell me what they were and then ask me to put it back together.
Fast forward 30 years and I’m raising a family of my own. My father has assumed the role of grandfather. And I spend my days out in the shop working with my hands. Sometimes they smell of WD-40.
