Today we remember the saints who have gone before us. We remember the saints who were canonized by the church and wrote many books that we now endeavor to follow because they help to keep us on the path laid before us by Jesus.

Me, I remember my grandfather. He was a different sort of saint. Today would have been his 115th birthday. He would have been very, very, very old. I would have had a lot of time to get under his skin. I did that quite regularly and with abandon. We never quite got along when I was a kid. I never quite understood that when I was kid. I think I do now.

He was a very strict man with a bold twinkle in his eye. There was, you see, a large helping of grace in his heart. He never went to church for all the days that I knew him, but I know now that that doesn’t matter at all.

I was the sort of child who rarely stopped chattering. I had few, if any, governors on my thoughts. My grandfather was of the generation who firmly believed that children should be seen and not heard. To say there was a clash of cultures between the two of us would be putting it mildly. I got more than a large dose of stubborn from him.

I was famous for asking him pointed questions about anything that crossed my mind … including his anatomy. He was famous for being disingenous because he was not willing to hear my response. Yet, I probably spent more time with him than any of my other grandparents as a small child. I ended up driving around large portions of the western part of Massachusetts with him following fire trucks and parades.

LightHusband may lay it at my grandfather’s feet that we watch endless episodes of “murder” television. I learned to love it by eating dinner on a television tray and watching “Ironsides” with my grandfather. Don’t tell anyone, but I always snuck the ketchup on my grandmother’s Minute Rice because it was yucky! You can do that in the dark.

My grandfather did many things in his life. He was a teamster throughout most of his life. We found his journal a few years ago along with some photographs from his childhood. They came as a large surprise to me. The man who was so strict as my grandfather, was a large prankster as a child. It winked and twinkled out of his eyes. The same man walked all over Brooklyn and to and from New Jersey on his days off … just for something to do. He joined the National Guard to fight Santa Ana in Texas.  He also spent years caring for his elderly mother and more years caring for his wayward sister who was coping and recuperating from an abusive marriage and serial abusive relationships.  He never said much about it, it was just what he did.  As adults his children have put the puzzle together and passed the story along.

I remember him for his attempts to get me to eat my dinner.  They were numerous.  He would fix me with his blue eyes and tell me that it was more healthy to chew my food eighty times before swallowing it.  Then he gracefully put his chin in the air and commenced chewing.  I tried to chew eighty times.  HAH!  Try that sometime.  It’s impossible.  I watched and counted his chews one time … he couldn’t even do it.  So I gave up.  But I never told him.  Then he would tell me that children should be seen and not heard.  But I did not believe that and told him so.  Then at long last, he would fix me with his eyes and say, “Eat thy supper and let thy food stop thy mouth.”  And that would be the end of that.  Humph.

But I always knew where I could find him when I visited their house.  And I always knew that when I wanted a pencil or a piece of paper to draw that those could be found in his wonderful desk which was available to me at any time.  I still have the postcards from all over the world that he faithfully sent me all of my life til he died in 1974.  He loved to travel and see the world.  He loved to read.  Despite our clash of cultures, he loved me.  And I loved him.  He was a good man and a saint to be remembered on this day of saints.