What Grandpas Are Supposed To Do

For most of my growing up years, my family lived in Upstate New York. Dad was from Idaho, and with his parents still there, Grandpa and Grandma Feickert were really my only conception of what grandparents were. 

The two of them made for quite a pair. Grandma Feickert was so generous, though that generosity frequently manifested in a questionable taste in gift-giving. She was freely affectionate. And she always, always seemed to be my biggest cheerleader. That’s just how grandmas were, and how they were supposed to be, because that’s how she was.

Meanwhile, Grandpa Feickert was hard working, organized, exacting, and in turn, so playful. He also tended to be the biggest personality in the room. That’s just how grandpas were, and for all I knew, how they were supposed to be.

One of my earliest memories of Grandpa Feickert is from when I was five or six years old. We lived in Oswego, NY, and Grandpa and Grandma lived in Baldwinsville. He was working then as a salesman for the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), and one week, his scheduled sales calls meant he would be in the area. He was going to visit us after work one evening! Over the phone, he asked me what I might want him to bring me. And, with all my schooling in Saturday morning cartoon commercials, I told him what I wanted most in the world: Donkey Kong Crunch (cereal)!

I could hardly wait the days until he came. And when his car finally pulled up, I leapt out the front door to greet him, expectantly. With an excitement in his voice I have never forgotten, Grandpa confessed that he couldn’t find the Donkey Kong Crunch, but he’d instead brought me Pac-Man cereal! 

In that moment, I could hardly have been happier. Grandpa had brought me cereal -- just what I figured grandpas were supposed to do.

After Grandma and Grandpa moved to Dexter, visits to their house became the things I most looked forward to in the world. That had just about everything to do with Grandpa’s willingness to let us use his equipment to fish off his dock, and to take us out in his boat to fish and water ski. When we kids weren't fishing or swimming, we'd play badminton on his net across the street. And Grandpa would also find time to play Wiffle Ball -- a version in which he was the all-time pitcher. All of this seemed to be part of what Grandpas were supposed to do.     

In the years we lived in Ilion, NY, Grandma and Grandpa visited regularly, often around holidays. For several years, when they stayed with us, they slept on an air mattress and sleeping bags in the living room. Especially on Christmas morning, we kids delighted in waking them up as early as we could get away with. Looking back now, it must have taken an uncommon amount of patience to let us wake them up. Grandpa would even sometimes even respond with playful wisecracks -- the kind of wisecracks we figured grandpas are supposed to give when their grandkids wake them up at 5 or 6 in the morning.

It took me a long time to figure out that there's not actually a manual or rule book for grandpas. It took me a long time to realize that he didn’t have to do all those things for us that he did. That he didn't have to spend as much time with us as he did. That not everyone got to have a Grandpa Feickert. That he ever really could have had any other role in life than to be my grandpa.

Grandpa was amazing at so many things, but thankfully for the rest of us, he wasn't perfect. I think it was common knowledge, at least among family, that he had a rather infamous temper. [In fact, I think it's from Grandpa that I learned some of the more colorful words in the English language -- usually after one of us grandkids had gotten a fishing pole stuck or otherwise been less than careful with his equipment!] 

At one point, though, while I was in college (and after he and Grandma had moved to North Carolina), we were all visiting my family in Upstate New York. I remember sitting in church with him during a discussion about fasting. As he held back tears, Grandpa candidly shared that he had recently been fasting for help with his temper, and that with God's help, he had gotten control of it.

I don’t think I had ever heard Grandpa talk like that before. All these years later, what strikes me about that experience isn't that Grandpa was probably a bit hasty declaring victory over his temper. It's that my grandpa, then in his 70s, was still actively trying to overcome something that was hard for him. He was still trying to improve himself.  In my mind, that trying means everything.

 

Those who knew my grandparents knew that, for most of the latter part of their lives, Grandpa and Grandma were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And for as long as I knew them, Grandma and Grandpa dedicated a great deal of time and energy to their faith. But as dedicated as Grandpa was to his faith, and for as much as he loved telling stories, I don't remember him being terribly preachy. Grandpa's religion always seemed to be more lived, more practical, than preachy.

From what I know of Grandpa and Grandma’s faith, they believed in a loving and merciful God. They believed that life does not begin at birth and does not end with death. They believed that Jesus is our Savior -- that by following Jesus’s teaching we become more like God (and hopefully happier people), and that through Jesus's sacrifice, we would each be redeemed (our imperfections notwithstanding).  Grandpa and Grandma believed that we would all be resurrected. And that in the next life, we would all have the chance to be with those we love.

Alfred "Red" Charles Feickert, Jr., died on May 12, 2019. As my siblings processed his passing, there were two recurring thoughts: (1) gratitude that he’s no longer in pain, and (2) elation at the thought of him being reunited with Grandma — that maybe she was waiting for him.

I want to believe that latter thought of a happy reunion is more than just a comforting notion we tell ourselves to cope with death. I sure hope I'll get to see him again, maybe just to watch as he smiles and jokes his way through a game of Liar's Dice ("Bluffer's Dice" in our house), or to hear him tell stories about his latest fishing adventures. Or maybe even just to tell him one more time how grateful I came to feel that, out of all of life's possible scenarios, I was one of the lucky ones that got to have a Grandpa Feickert.

Saints and Poets Revisited

I learned last night that Mrs. Williams, my 11th grade English teacher, passed away late last month. She was the one who, through that class, introduced me to several works of literature, including the Thornton Wilder play "Our Town".

I wrote about that play years ago, but in the play there’s a pivotal moment when Emily Gibbs, who has died and been given permission to revisit her 11th birthday, begs her mother to “look at me as though you really saw me!”  When her mother does not, Emily cannot bear it, and the stage manager notes that only the "saints and poets" seem to realize life while living it, and even then only sometimes.

In that class all those years ago, I remember Mrs. Williams asking whether Wilder had gotten that right -- whether most of us live out our lives with blinders and fail to realize life while living "every, every minute".

There have been moments in the years since, still far too rare, when I catch myself appreciating life as I'm living it. Usually it's in smaller moments with my kids that I begin to appreciate and want to hold onto, which then gives way to a kind of desperation as I sense anew how fleeting those moments are.

It's in those moments that I remember "Our Town," and it's in those moments I remember Mrs. Williams, because she's the one who led me there in the first place. To me, she was (and is) among the "saints and poets" who not only realized life while living it, but helped the rest of us to do the same.