January 19, 2006

Blood

Jo & Lige Hall - 1980 or '81.

My grandmother was barely 16 years old when she married my grandfather, he was only a few short months past 21, and within the next ten years they had five children; thirteen years after that they'd added another two, my mother among them.

Because I came along, their final grandchild, a whole generation (29 years) after their first, most of the stories of their life were already legend. By that time they'd retired (as much as lifelong farmers can retire), from daily farm life and they'd been in town for more than 25 years. I was a modern girl, living a suburban American life almost 1,000 miles away, and I think in a lot of ways we didn't understand each other - these small town rural grandparents of mine; this spoiled, attention-centered granddaughter of theirs. Going to visit them was like visiting another planet - cookies in the cookie jar; porch swings; backyard gardens; alleys and basements full of treasure; box fans instead of air conditioning. My father rolled his eyes at their penny-pinching, and I couldn't understand it either. How much is a light bulb anyway? But as I've stood on my own two feet (with enormous help from the boon of their bone-crunching work, of course), I understand it all too well. When you come from dirt, you learn quickly that dirt is the only thing that lasts.

My PaPa was never prouder of anything than he was of his family - his family was everything to him. Their name, their reputation, his legacy. Feb. 20 will mark the sixth anniversary of his death, but there is never a gathering or a moment when his name isn't on someone's tongue. He hangs among us, a giant of a memory, everyone's recollections different. After this year's Christmas Eve, my cousin Ron (aka "Big Ron"), who at 47 is already a grandfather himself, hung around late - talking to me, my mother, Colleen and Aunt Jane. He told us story after story of PaPa working with him on the Hall farm. How, when the rain was coming and they were bailing hay, my grandfather had no time for laughter or jokes. (I guess that's what they mean when they say hurry up and make hay.) Ron laughed and said that you didn't mess around when you were working with PaPa, not unless you wanting a verbal lashing or a head thump. I can't imagine PaPa as a strict boss - when he was with me, he was gentle, patient - getting me lollipops from the bank or teaching me how to keep "the books." He would sit on their front porch every morning and afternoon and read, waving at neighbors as they walked by. He would tolerate my singing as I pushed myself on the porch swing, and he never even yelled at me that time I took every rubber band out of his desk and wrapped them around the porch newel post. (Of course, there was that one time he asked me repeatedly to stop playing on the organ, and I ignored him, only to be yanked off the bench by my ponytail.)

Time is running away from me, and I can't slow it down. I can't go back to that porch swing and see my PaPa sitting across from me, his tractor company hat on his head, newspaper stretched out in front of him. I can't go back to the hot, sticky nights of sleeping in the spare bedroom in their 1800s house, a box fan running over my head, knowing at some point he was going to come in the room and turn it off - who needs a fan when they're asleep?

My grandparents lives were more different than mine than I can possibly list out or articulate. But their blood is in my heart and I can't imagine it any different.

Posted by hannah at 12:53 PM