Grandpa and Ryne
I love this picture of my grandpa holding Ryne for the first time.
If I were feeling more eloquent, I would say something about how much I love my grandpa. I have this picture in my head of him nudging open my bedroom door to see if I was awake. I think it might be my earliest memory. I can see my rainbow-printed border, and the crinkling at the edge of his eyes as he smiled at me and winked, and I remember feeling so happy that I got to spend the day with him. He's always winking.
He used to sing "You are my sunshine" to me while I slept on his belly. Once when we were visiting my great-grandparents when I was maybe 8 years old, he and I went on a walk, and he picked up some teenager's hastily discarded toilet paper and showed me how to TP a tree. He took me fishing and let me use Grandma's purple worm (I can always catch a fish with Grandma's purple worm), and when my dog died my first year of college, he called me and said, "I'm sorry, Haley. He was about as good of a dog as anybody could ask for."
He can be irritable and childish, and if he doesn't get his way he's pretty much the opposite of gracious. You'd better hand him that screwdriver fast when he asks for it, and try to just tune out all the cussing and yelling when whatever he's fixing doesn't want to be fixed. It's best to just be silent then. Do NOT change his tv, and don't expect him to do anything patiently.
And maybe he made me cry once by asking me what my book was about and then telling me he didn't really care, and maybe I'm still in the middle of a 15-year euchre boycott because he made me feel like I wasn't smart enough to play.
But though he can be grumpy and slamming doors one minute, the next he's teary-eyed and dancing with my grandma around the kitchen, singing "Remember When"and telling her he'd marry her all over again tomorrow if he could. He's stringing lanterns in the trees and letting his granddaughter tear up his yard with tents and chairs and people because she wants to get married at the lake. And he's holding his first great-grandson and smiling like it's something miraculous.
So I love my grandpa.
He used to sing "You are my sunshine" to me while I slept on his belly. Once when we were visiting my great-grandparents when I was maybe 8 years old, he and I went on a walk, and he picked up some teenager's hastily discarded toilet paper and showed me how to TP a tree. He took me fishing and let me use Grandma's purple worm (I can always catch a fish with Grandma's purple worm), and when my dog died my first year of college, he called me and said, "I'm sorry, Haley. He was about as good of a dog as anybody could ask for."
He can be irritable and childish, and if he doesn't get his way he's pretty much the opposite of gracious. You'd better hand him that screwdriver fast when he asks for it, and try to just tune out all the cussing and yelling when whatever he's fixing doesn't want to be fixed. It's best to just be silent then. Do NOT change his tv, and don't expect him to do anything patiently.
And maybe he made me cry once by asking me what my book was about and then telling me he didn't really care, and maybe I'm still in the middle of a 15-year euchre boycott because he made me feel like I wasn't smart enough to play.
But though he can be grumpy and slamming doors one minute, the next he's teary-eyed and dancing with my grandma around the kitchen, singing "Remember When"and telling her he'd marry her all over again tomorrow if he could. He's stringing lanterns in the trees and letting his granddaughter tear up his yard with tents and chairs and people because she wants to get married at the lake. And he's holding his first great-grandson and smiling like it's something miraculous.
So I love my grandpa.