Beautiful Memories

He was a giant of a man with the most penetrating eyes I ever saw. His look seemed to say “I know what you are on about.” His eyes didn’t daunt me, afterall I spent short spans of time with him and this meant he did not get to see through me. This of course I began to think about when I was of age…before he would just be my grandfather, old, towering over everyone, the occasional endearment of calling me ‘my wife’ and seeming to dot on me amongst my siblings, letting me play with his walking stick and generally enjoying the camaraderie  when he occasionally came to visit.

When I went to visit him and my grandmother and was not too grown up to mind his company he would walk me down to the village shopping centre. We usually made our first stop at a tea place (it didn’t matter that we had already enjoyed very rich tea from my grandmother’s kettle). We took some more, and in glasses (why did they serve tea in glasses, something I always wondered but never verbalized). Of course I didn’t care for tea, that was a grown up drink, I thought. I sat there, mesmerized by the very different and interesting characteristics of my grandfather’s village mates. Their tone of speech, their friendly and very elaborate handshakes, their continued gazing at me (they had never seen a skinnier lass), that’s what I thought since my grandfather constantly admonished me for ‘not eating.’ He would prod me to finish my tea…I took a sip.

Our next stop would be another food place – to fatten the skinny girl. I would sit and wait, wondering, asking him all sorts of odd questions that were sometimes brushed off with a chuckle. Sometimes he would just look at me intently, like he was studying me. He was a thinking man I guess, so this was not strange to me. Next thing I knew there was a mound of roasted meat on our table and the prodding to eat began yet again.  I would get tired after a few bites and he would start with the admonishing “eat or you shall forever remain skinny, do you eat?”….I tried to pick a few more pieces, the admonitions going on, I ignored them. He carried on without me. I was awed by his insatiable appetite for meat. He loved it so much that if in his next life he comes back as a lion it wouldn’t be a misplaced reincarnation. I watched as he wiped the surface clean of any hint of meat.

My very odd memories of my grandfather, he has checked out at an advanced age of 90-something years of age (he wasn’t sure either). Memories are varied….different, fond, not too fond, but this are the best I remember him by. I guess it’s because I was still innocent, wide eyed to the world…other memories may be muddied with maturity and knowledge and therefore not as beautiful. We remember people with the beautiful memories, the smiling memories, the walking down the spidery village road to the meat place….best memories.