OCTOBER 11, 2021 – Yesterday I didn’t encounter another human being. I stayed “on premises,” pulling our dock and lift out of the water and storing the components on shore for the winter. It’s a complex operation, and not wishing to over-tax my body, I took things slowly and deployed lots of “wheels” (logs) and levers.
The only word I uttered aloud yesterday was an expletive in reaction to a pine limb that high winds dropped in the very spot I’d occupied a second before. Dad had once warned about flying limbs when fierce winds blow at the cabin. His words echoed when the branch thudded into the ground.
As I worked, I also thought about Grandpa, and how hard he’d worked at various cabin projects when he was my age—and older. I thought about how I perceive Dad and Grandpa now that I’m older than they were when I’d considered them . . . “old.”
Doubtless my perceptions are universally shared. That is, we who ourselves have become “seniors” can’t psychologically imagine our grandparents as peers. We can’t imagine sitting down with them when they were our age and engaging in a tête-à-tête about much of anything other than feeding the chipmunks. It’s always our grandparents as “seniors” and ourselves as youngsters. Since our strongest grandparent-memories were formed when we were children, for the most part recollections of the relationship remain as those of a child or young adult relating to an old person.
This isn’t to say that if our grandparents lived long we didn’t have adult conversations with them. I did, to be sure, but though I’d attained adulthood when three of my four grandparents were still around, my imaginary encounters with them today can’t seem to bring me to my current age. I can’t say, “Yo, fellow geezer! Let’s have a first-thing-in-the-morning clear-your-throat contest! Betcha I can win it, hands down . . . or is it ‘phlegm up’? Just kidding. Hey, whaddya say we sit out in front of the cabin, smoke cigars, have ourselves a beer, and yak about life?”
No, I can’t imagine such talk between Grandpa and me. It would either feature a chipmunk crowding its mouth with in-the-shell peanuts from the supply Grandpa always kept on hand or it’d be a lecture about why I should practice my violin or what a miracle that a tiny acorn can grow into an big oak tree like the one that shaded the corner of the cabin.
My imaginary conversations with my parents are quite different. I had the good fortune of spending lots of time with Mother and Dad long after I’d entered adulthood. Once a child, always a child to the parents, but notwithstanding that immutable circumstance, in conversation I achieved parity of age.
While analyzing “next moves” during yesterday’s dock removal, I “consulted” Dad, not Grandpa. “What do you think, Dad?” I’d ask. “Can I get that corner past the tipping point before I have to adjust the winch?” That’s not the question a child would ask his grandfather.
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
