PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

My paternal grandparents lived on a small rural property, just north of a very small town in our county.  Even to this day, I believe that it was a very poetic place---a front yard, which sloped down from the state highway; then a small complex of buildings (two cottages, one of which was used for storage of items that would be, by our definition, antiques); the outhouse; a workshop in which my grandfather kept the tools of his former trade, as a car mechanic to the affluent (and he was not one of them) before he became a bridge builder for the county; west of these buildings, the property was bisected by a small creek, only ankle deep, over which a blank bridge led to the western half of their property, which was a thickly overgrown wildflower meadow.  Their ownship extended through the meadow right to the edge of the walnut woods, which was not theirs.

  In my elementary school years, I became convinced that the buildings were very old (the storage cottage had been original with the property; the others had been built by my father and grandfather).  Also, due to a reproduced painting in the corridor leading to my school's lunchroom, a picture which showed the pilgrims walking near a thick woods, I also believed that the original pilgrims had come through the walnut woods, and then my grandparents' place, on their way to Massachusetts (my sense of geography was badly off on that one).

   But my earliest memory of Thanksgiving is from my pre-school years; possibly my third year of life.  At that early age, I became very found---and still remain so---of the sort of green olives that are stuffed with pimento.  My grandparents always seemed to have a jar of these in their refridgerator.  On Thanksgivings, my grandmother served these as part of her relish try.  During the preparations before the dinner, I would sneak into the kitchen, find the relish try within my reach, and steal the olives---just the olives, not the pickles or the other appetizers.  My grandmother pretended to become aggravated, and would wave her hands as if to swat me away.  Then, when she thought I was not looking (but I was sneaky enough to peak around the corner), she refilled the relish tray with olives and set it back in the exact spot that was within my reach.

    I was the baby of our grandchildren.  I had no siblings, and my cousins, children of my father's sister, were considerably older:  the youngest was nine years older than me, and the oldest was already serving in the Marine Corps.  I was also adopted and was given, through the adoption, a very noble and historic name that descended from a New England governor for the two King Charles (first and second).  And because I dislike my mundane first name, and am unworthy (exponentially) to bear the surname, I prefer just to be Starward.  My grandparents loved me very visibly.  I was also the only grandchildren who had not been frightened, in early years, by my grandfather's stature.  He was a huge man; at one time, I believed he was a giant.  From time to time, when we visited with them, and he was mowing the grass with his riding mower (the property was too extensive to be mowed with a push-mower), he would take me for a long ride on the riding mower:  I say on one of his knees, and he had his free arm around me like the bar on a roller coaster car.  That arm seemed as firm as steel, yet did not squeeze me or make me feel uncomfortable.  I actually felt extremely safe as we flew, in full gear, up the slope to the highway, a sharp turn, and then down even faster.  Sometimes I howled with laughter, but never fear.  I was too young, when he died in 1969 (after over a year of wasting away, after botched brain surgery, in a nursing home) to have articulated how much I loved him.  But for the rest of my youth, and until I was twenty-nine and a half, my paternal grandmother was part of my life.

     I will offer one last anecdote about my grandmother.  Nothing to do with thanksgiving; it takes place on an ordinary Thursday night in spring of 1973.  We had gone to my grandparents' place where we mowed, with pushmowers, around the buildings, the iron rose trellis, and so forth; since she was unable to do so, and my grandfather had already passed away.  (Someone else brought a riding mower in to mow the larger portions.)  My favorite television show was Thursday nights' The Waltons; mostly because adolescent Mary Ellen (Judy Norton) was shown, so often, barefoot. While mowing that night, and fearful of missing the episode, I was consoling myself with mental images of the barefoot Mary Ellen when, by accident, I cut through one corner of my grandmother's flowerbed, which she always planted by hand and on her knees with a small trowel.  At once, my father, who was supervising (he was a born supervisor) came up behind me, unseen by me, and yanked me backward by my shirt collar.  The mower was not one of those that turns off when the handle is let go, so it continued to run, loudly.  Over that noise, my father began to curse me with words I had never heard before, or from his mouth.  He was, for some reason, extremely outrage.  I might add that, like his own father (my grandfather) he stood over six feet tall.  All of a sudden, my grandmother---who had been washing the supper dishes and watching through the kitchen window---came, almost running, out of the house, dishtowel thrown over her shoulder.  While my father was still cursing me, she took hold of the lawnmower and pushed it across the flowerbed, cutting off all of her blooming spring that he had planted just a few weeks before.  At the end of the flowerbed, she turned off the lawnmower, walked back toward us, with a most distinct glare on her face; she then looked at my father and said, in a most aggravated tone, "Now say something to me."  I learned later, from working summer jobs where he worked (and supervised; and had become an executive) that most people who knew him believed he was terrified of his mother.  On that night, he just walked away, wordlessly, shaking his headl  Nothing else was said.  Even on the ride home, he was taciturn and said nothing.  I knew that silence was better than chatter, at that time.  I could not, however, suppress the wide grin on my face.

    And, right after we arrived home, I did get to see Mary Ellen, deliciously barefoot and ready for me to bring her into my early adolescent dreams.

Starward, grandson of Mary and Charles