Sentimental

I know a guy at church who has a two-year-old son. Sometimes after church we'll agree to meet in the school cafeteria for coffee and doughnuts. And our friend will point to the nursery and say, "Let me go get the boy." And there was another time when we asked what his family was doing that weekend. He said, "It's the boy's birthday so we're having a party." 

At first I thought it betrayed some kind of indifference to call your baby "the boy", then I just thought of it as quirky. Then I grew to like hearing him say it and I couldn't figure out why. The tone or the delivery? But I was thinking more about it yesterday and I realized that when our friend refers to The Boy, it's like his boy is the only boy. The only boy who matters.

And I was thinking about my grandpa this morning.

Lately when I drive to work I've been driving in silence. I have a giant stack of CDs scattered on the passenger seat and a radio station on every preset, but I've liked the quiet recently. It's much easier to concentrate on your conversation with yourself when you're not also listening to traffic reports and jewelry store ads. This morning I was sitting in the lane to turn onto the bridge. I had my blinker on and the little blinker noise seemed extraordinarily loud.

When I was a kid, my grandpa had what I believed to be a most luxurious automobile. It was a white Buick sedan with deep blue velvety upholstery, the kind you can write on just by drawing with your finger. The backs of the front seats showed footprints if you moved your foot just the right way. Or sometimes we tried to play hangman, but that never worked. Every once in a while we would pile into the back bench seat to go feed the ducks. We behaved in that car. It was very clean and smelled of older people and my grandma's plastic head scarves and velvety blue upholstery.

And it was quiet. Grandpa liked to play a game called Little Red Schoolhouse. The object of the game was to be as quiet as possible, but Grandpa never really explained that to us. He would simply say, "Let's play Little Red Schoolhouse" and then sit there, waiting for us to say "How do you play that game?" or make any other noise. And one of us inevitably did and Grandpa would exclaim, "I win!" We didn't get it. Then we got older and we got it and we felt a little tricked, to be honest. But in the white sedan with the quiet engine and the fancy upholstery- so different from our big rattly van!- we didn't need to play a game.

I remember sitting behind Grandpa's seat on these trips. He was losing his hair and I would look at the folds of skin in his neck and wonder if my dad's neck would look like that when he got old. I never thought about what my neck would look like. Most of all I remember the loud click clack whenever Grandpa turned on the blinker. It seemed a disturbing noise for such a quiet and dignified vehicle. And it lasted for an interminable amount of time! Turning into the park entrance: click clack click clack. Turning into the parking lot: click clack click clack.

When he passed away the car disappeared- my grandma never learned to drive- and if we wanted to feed the ducks in the summers, my dad drove. I can still see and smell Grandpa's car. I know exactly what the blue fabric felt like on my bare legs. Every time a turn signal permeates silence I think of the back of his neck, his hands poised to twist the steering wheel.

Comments

[Jane Horowitz]

You are one amazing woman, Maggie!
xoxopat's friend jane