List 43 memories of my Grandpa

He’d say garriage (like carriage) for garage & pronounced aluminum as aluminium (with an extra syllable). Also, he’d say nope and yup with a certain inflection – so that they (almost) rhymed – that I can still hear in my mind’s ear. And there were many other special “grandpa words”.... fond smile

When my grandma would ask him, “ice cream or whipped cream on your pie, dear?” my grandpa would inevitably answer:

“Yes”

smile

this goal on hold for the time being; I expect to return to it when I’ve completed my travel.

with my grandparents for a couple of years, during my teens, I got to know more of their little idiosyncracies than I had during previous years’ shorter visits. Tonight I’m remembering how my grandfather would always – always – declare, with a straight face, when caught snoozing, that he had not in fact been sleeping, merely “inspecting my eyelids.” smile

http://www.43things.com/entries/view/3979788

is a poem “about” (based on memories of) my grandfather. smile

I traveled with my maternal grandparents on a 2500-mile trip by car. With their dog & cat & six-year-old me….

I remember Grandpa helping me to “catch fish” – tiny minnows – using a clean & empty can from frozen orange juice concentrate as our “net”—and placing the little ones we’d caught into another such can in order to take them & show them to Grandma. (Later, of course, we released them into the pond whence they’d come.) What pure joy this was!