Grandpa Chris

My Grandpa Christensen is an inventor.
In his garage are trinkets and wood shavings from past failed inventions, projects currently in operation, and plans laid out for future inspiration. When he works he wears plaid flannel shirts and suspenders.
He is my only claim to fame.
A slight case of Parkinson's makes him shake a little. When he hugs me he kisses me on the cheeks and says,
"I sure do love ya sweetheart."
When he talks about wood, or chemicals, or cars, his eyes light up and he becomes a little boy. When he has a new idea his mind ticks visibly, and one can see him turning cartwheels and running a million miles a minute in his brilliant brain.
When my grandma became ill he used to sit with her in the hospital room. He was so sad, so very, very, sad. He would sit and sit and hold her hand, and he wouldn't say anything at all when she died.
Around my grandpa is an aura of old fashioned politeness and the humility that wisdom brings. His patience sets him apart and it causes him to glow.
I am afraid to ever lose him.

Grandpa T.

His name was Elmer Thompson-E.T. for short- and he was the first to die.
It happened on the eighteenth hole of the Teton Golf Course. He tapped his ball into the hole, and the game was over. It was all over. Heart attack, they said. We'll put up a bench in his memory.
I was in third grade.

Growing up with E.T., as my mother remembers, was always an adventure. He was an entrepreneur, a business man who always let his gentle disposition lose him money. He ran a little old fashioned grocery store and gas station, like the A&P in John Updike's short story. He was always a little quiet. But while he was shy he had a beautiful voice and beautiful generosity. Many renters of the trailer park boarded free, and many workers came into the store for complimentary sandwiches and beer. That was my grandpa; pure, unrestrained, kindness... mixed with a little cheer.

I remember him in a wool golf hat. Like a shoemaker elf, he was always busy fixing something for somebody else. He smelled like leather, and work, and something naturally sweet and good. When he and Grandma would come and stay, he would sit down with us at dinner and say to my dad, "So, Doc, what's the news?" I remember looking at a picture of him at a tap-dance recital with his dancing partner, and not comprehending that this other woman was not my grandmother. I have never seen two people more fully in love than my grandparents, and it is through their relationship that my ideals of courtship and marriage blossomed. My grandpa never had a piano lesson, but he played wonderfully by ear, and to her he sang those old songs that come in the big ballad books.
"That damn piano," Grandma would say.
But then she would smile, because she loved him.
We all did.