Remembering Grandpa
(Jennifer Lund)
You always gave me your socks to keep my feet warm
Coming to visit on a weekend
At Grandma and Grandpa’s house
Eating your famous French toast on Sunday mornings before Mass
In the kitchen with pink cupboards and red-checkered curtains.
Denying being smart or worldly or any good at music,
And finding it difficult to hum “My dog has fleas”,
But you could build your own house,
Learn to make dentures for a dentist in town,
Develop your own photography down in your basement workroom,
And take a car engine apart and put it back together again.
You never claimed to be a fashionista,
Preferring white t-shirts and blue jeans to bow-ties and pant suits,
But you could pilot a plane through a thunderstorm,
And find the best deals at flea-markets,
Or talk the longest over the back fence with your neighbors,
Or eat the most peanut brittle and rhubarb pie.
You also didn’t have much of a travel bug,
Your 1985 car never getting past 65,000 miles,
But you did own some land on the Muskegon River,
Where you kept a trailer for fishing trips.
Robert Charles Lund, whose last name means “grove of trees”,
Preferred a solitary hike with one of the dogs on the beach.
Signing my birthday cards when Grandma no longer could,
You let me drive you to Plumb’s supermarket after she died,
And buy peanut butter, bananas, and Breyer’s vanilla ice cream.
Slipping me money on my way back to university,
And helping me study with the desk that you built.
But even though higher education was mostly foreign to you,
You took my High School senior picture in your rigged-up studio
And your great-uncle Otto who made my first violin,
And your father who could play every instrument under the sun.
You were admirably stubborn and a die-hard penny-pincher,
Like your self-reliant, poverty-stricken grandparents
Who emigrated to America from a tiny village in the middle of Sweden.
Changing their names from Andersson to Lund for a reason we will never know.
Perhaps later causing you to roll-up the toothpaste tube to get every last drop.
Inventing new gadgets and fixing anything broken,
Me so like you and yet so different,
But forever your grand-daughter,
Thinking of your everyday qualities of genius,
To overcome any obstacle,
And STILL wearing your socks to keep my feet warm!##imported-begin##Jennifer Lund##imported-end##
