“My Other Grandad” by Samuel Smith

I never knew my mom’s dad. Grandma says that my older brother, Kevin, used to call him “Pop-Pop”, but that was a long time ago. These days, Kevin doesn’t call the old man anything. I’m not sure he remembers him at all.

I did know my dad’s dad, if only briefly. I called him Gramps, and I think I was a little bit scared of him. I remember that he almost never smiled; he was one of those men who are too masculine to feel things, and almost too masculine to speak. He did, however, have a long white beard, and he let me play with it, which was sweet of him. 

That beard is my clearest memory of Gramps. I was somewhere in the range of four years old, and he was somewhere in the range of sixty, but looked a lot older. My whole family was crowded around his rough wooden dining table, and the room was sleepy and hot from his old stone fireplace. I was half-awake on Gramps’s big, soft knee. His beard was a perfect pillow, and a perfect plaything. My tired fingers twisted the strands of his hair into lazy knots, and he never once complained. It’s strange to me now that such a stern man could have been so soft in that moment. 

Less than a year later, Gramps was dead, and I only had one grandfather left. This one wasn’t my mom’s dad, and he wasn’t my dad’s dad, but he was my Grandad. I’m the only person in my family who knows about him. 

Behind my parents’ house, there’s a clump of trees that you might, with a little imagination, call a forest. That’s where I met Grandad. I was twelve years old and miserable about it, and I had gone outside to hit a tree with a stick until one or the other broke. After some searching, I found a good stick, and I found a good tree, and I found an old man. I was less pleased by the latter than the former. 

He had once been tall, and still would have been, if not for his hunch. He was long and thin all over, but his torso doubled in on itself in a way that made it seem larger than it really was. I remember thinking that he looked like a spider, as he squatted there on a stump, his long arms stretching out from that roly-poly body. 

At first, I didn’t know who he was, and I was pretty upset to find an old man intruding on my private place. I stared at him for a while, not sure what to say, but he didn’t so much as look at me. He was busy peering at a clump of gooey orange mushrooms on the ground, his little half moon spectacles (the kind that a cartoon wizard might wear) balancing neatly on the edge of his long nose. Sometimes he would cock his head slightly, like a dog, as if he was trying to hear something more clearly.

You know, the mushroom isn’t the whole beast. Even as he spoke, he never took his watery little eyes off the mushrooms; it took me a few seconds to realize that he was talking to me. His voice was so deep, and clear. It didn’t quite match the rest of him. 

“Uh – I guess?”, I stammered. I was suddenly rather embarrassed. The old man looked so sweet, so pure, and I was still young enough to believe in sweet and pure grown-ups. 

Don’t worry kiddo. We’re all just guessing. Still he didn’t look at me. I’m glad I have a grandson who’s willing to own up to it. 

Now he finally hopped off his stump and turned toward me. The hem of his long black robe caught on the edge of a stick and tore as he moved, but he didn’t seem to notice. 

Looking into his eyes, I recognized him, though I had never seen him before. He was my Grandad. He knew things that most people didn’t. 

Grandad tapped the side of his long nose with the nail of an even longer finger. I’m glad we’ve finally gotten a chance to chat. There’s something I want to show you. 

He turned and walked deeper into the forest, never once looking back. He was sure that I would follow. He was wrong.

I watched him fade away. I knew that he couldn’t go very far, that the trees were replaced by a busy, buzzing stretch of highway just beyond the horizon line. Alone on a stump, I sat waiting for him to return. I’m not sure how much time passed. It began to get dark, and I tried to remember what time it had been when I left the house. If I strained my ears, I could hear the sound of the cars rushing past.

My dad called me in for dinner. I lingered a few minutes longer, pretending I hadn’t heard. Then he called again, louder and less patient, and I slouched my way back to the house. I didn’t tell anyone about Grandad then. I still haven’t now. You’re the only one who knows. 

Samuel Smith is a person from Michigan (the state) attending Michigan (the university). He has no idea what is going on. It took him three tries to spell "university" correctly.