surprise
here's an essay for you kids. i like feedback. let me know. and family, yes, i know there may be some exaggerations. i was young. i'm going with what i remember.
Keith Wears Nathan’s Dress
Peering across the vast expanse of melded vinyl, I could not help but stare. Those perfect, white rows of carefully crafted plastic, those perfect white rows capable of ripping flesh from bone just sat there.
My first four years of life whiled away in relative disillusion and childlike bliss. I knew only what I had thus far experienced, which, as I later found out, was not quite the standard procedure of orthodox American life. Though I remained completely unaware of any discrepancy in my rearing, this one defining moment at my grandmother’s kitchen table changed everything. I had my first epiphany.
From my oversized chair at the far end of the table, I casually observed, as is my natural tendency, removing myself from the melee of old men and black coffee. The voices chattered, the coffee cups clattered, and for the first time in my premature life, I realized the abnormality of dentures on the dinner table.
My grandfather hulks above me in my memory. A man of almost seven feet (or so he seemed) and lanky as swaying tree limbs, I did not often chance to see above his knees. Seated in his green, vinyl-upholstered chair, unmatched from the others at the wooden table, was one of the few conditions under which I could observe the upper half of his person. My sparsely haired baby’s head closely resembled his balding, geriatric head, sans bifocals and five o’clock shadow. People like to say I resemble my mother, but the evidence is undeniable; my face is purely paternal.
He was a man of his own will who religiously chose not to attend church but also acted as the host of a Sunday morning, post-mass coffee and biscuit ritual, a gathering of neatly dressed men with snowy hair who collected social security checks. Devout in his untraditional ways, he gained a respect from others that he begrudgingly lost with his ever-increasing age and what some would call senility. I prefer tenacity.
“What in the hell were you thinking, Dad?” our parents angrily demanded. “They don’t have on coats. Half of them don’t have on shoes. Why didn’t you tell someone you were taking them?”
Playing in the yard, wet grass chill under our feet, we jumped at the sight of Paw Paw driving up in his old Chevy pickup. Bored as we children were by the dull post-holiday denouement, he loaded us all into the truck’s cold bed and sped away. We were just going for a little ride.
“Faster! Faster!” the boys yelled, and faster and faster we went, zooming around the curvaceous back roads of the Louisiana flatlands. My small body clung to the dirty truck sides, both terrified and enlivened by the thrill of the ride. Having had little perception of time’s passage, the ride seemed an eternity, though it may have only lasted an hour. When we returned to the safety of our front yard once more, the parents fumed, scared to wit’s end by their disappearing progeny.
“What in the hell were you think, Dad?”
Irresponsible. Too old. Out of his mind. The same things they would later say when he sold a fortune’s worth of livestock, crashed his truck, wasted away from four packs a day.
I know now his faults, but as a child, I was both blinded by his impressive humanity and enlightened by his eye-opening idiosyncrasies. He surprised me with small candies, sugar-free for his diabetes, as well as cordials wrapped in shiny foil, though I disliked both chocolate and cherries at that age. He conversed at length with his imaginary friend Nathan, a character whom we later learned was a byproduct of his manic depression. He taught me the finer points, incidentally, of living life on one’s own terms.
He sat behind the house with his old transistor radio, the dial flicked permanently to the grainy sounds of Zydeco, a cigarette in hand, burning to the filter. He sat alone more often than not, his aging white Stetson propped low over his eyes, the shiny snaps of his cotton shirt partially open to reveal his softly sagging undershirt. He sat alone, but he always spoke.
“The damn drillin’ they’re doin’ across tha street’s driving me crazy. Keeps me up all night...yeah, yeah...he told me tha same thing yestaday...they betta find some all fa all that drillin’ they doin’ ova there...”
I always wondered to whom he spoke, but I never questioned his actions. We all knew Nathan. He was one of the inexplicable characteristics my grandfather had, yet no one discussed his habit until many years later. Nathan became the inside joke that was not really much of a joke. He was as much a part of my grandfather as his pale skin or baby blue eyes.
When I heard the news, I cried briefly, almost half heartedly, as I have come to realize is my initial and compulsory reaction to death. His funeral was a gathering of no small attendance. Though some said he was crazy in his old age, all revered him. My grandfather did not live to suit the expectations of others but to suit his own means. His uninhibited devotion to a life lived candidly gives me the confidence to remain deviant from the standard. A host bold enough to set his dentures on the table during meals, I can only hope to be such a brave and honest soul as my grandfather.
Keith Wears Nathan’s Dress
Peering across the vast expanse of melded vinyl, I could not help but stare. Those perfect, white rows of carefully crafted plastic, those perfect white rows capable of ripping flesh from bone just sat there.
My first four years of life whiled away in relative disillusion and childlike bliss. I knew only what I had thus far experienced, which, as I later found out, was not quite the standard procedure of orthodox American life. Though I remained completely unaware of any discrepancy in my rearing, this one defining moment at my grandmother’s kitchen table changed everything. I had my first epiphany.
From my oversized chair at the far end of the table, I casually observed, as is my natural tendency, removing myself from the melee of old men and black coffee. The voices chattered, the coffee cups clattered, and for the first time in my premature life, I realized the abnormality of dentures on the dinner table.
My grandfather hulks above me in my memory. A man of almost seven feet (or so he seemed) and lanky as swaying tree limbs, I did not often chance to see above his knees. Seated in his green, vinyl-upholstered chair, unmatched from the others at the wooden table, was one of the few conditions under which I could observe the upper half of his person. My sparsely haired baby’s head closely resembled his balding, geriatric head, sans bifocals and five o’clock shadow. People like to say I resemble my mother, but the evidence is undeniable; my face is purely paternal.
He was a man of his own will who religiously chose not to attend church but also acted as the host of a Sunday morning, post-mass coffee and biscuit ritual, a gathering of neatly dressed men with snowy hair who collected social security checks. Devout in his untraditional ways, he gained a respect from others that he begrudgingly lost with his ever-increasing age and what some would call senility. I prefer tenacity.
“What in the hell were you thinking, Dad?” our parents angrily demanded. “They don’t have on coats. Half of them don’t have on shoes. Why didn’t you tell someone you were taking them?”
Playing in the yard, wet grass chill under our feet, we jumped at the sight of Paw Paw driving up in his old Chevy pickup. Bored as we children were by the dull post-holiday denouement, he loaded us all into the truck’s cold bed and sped away. We were just going for a little ride.
“Faster! Faster!” the boys yelled, and faster and faster we went, zooming around the curvaceous back roads of the Louisiana flatlands. My small body clung to the dirty truck sides, both terrified and enlivened by the thrill of the ride. Having had little perception of time’s passage, the ride seemed an eternity, though it may have only lasted an hour. When we returned to the safety of our front yard once more, the parents fumed, scared to wit’s end by their disappearing progeny.
“What in the hell were you think, Dad?”
Irresponsible. Too old. Out of his mind. The same things they would later say when he sold a fortune’s worth of livestock, crashed his truck, wasted away from four packs a day.
I know now his faults, but as a child, I was both blinded by his impressive humanity and enlightened by his eye-opening idiosyncrasies. He surprised me with small candies, sugar-free for his diabetes, as well as cordials wrapped in shiny foil, though I disliked both chocolate and cherries at that age. He conversed at length with his imaginary friend Nathan, a character whom we later learned was a byproduct of his manic depression. He taught me the finer points, incidentally, of living life on one’s own terms.
He sat behind the house with his old transistor radio, the dial flicked permanently to the grainy sounds of Zydeco, a cigarette in hand, burning to the filter. He sat alone more often than not, his aging white Stetson propped low over his eyes, the shiny snaps of his cotton shirt partially open to reveal his softly sagging undershirt. He sat alone, but he always spoke.
“The damn drillin’ they’re doin’ across tha street’s driving me crazy. Keeps me up all night...yeah, yeah...he told me tha same thing yestaday...they betta find some all fa all that drillin’ they doin’ ova there...”
I always wondered to whom he spoke, but I never questioned his actions. We all knew Nathan. He was one of the inexplicable characteristics my grandfather had, yet no one discussed his habit until many years later. Nathan became the inside joke that was not really much of a joke. He was as much a part of my grandfather as his pale skin or baby blue eyes.
When I heard the news, I cried briefly, almost half heartedly, as I have come to realize is my initial and compulsory reaction to death. His funeral was a gathering of no small attendance. Though some said he was crazy in his old age, all revered him. My grandfather did not live to suit the expectations of others but to suit his own means. His uninhibited devotion to a life lived candidly gives me the confidence to remain deviant from the standard. A host bold enough to set his dentures on the table during meals, I can only hope to be such a brave and honest soul as my grandfather.