Too Late to Say I Love You (a mostly true story)

I qualify this story as "mostly true" because it's about not just one of my grandfathers, but both of them rolled into one. The idea behind writing it this way was to memorialize and express my gratitude to both of them at once, from my 19-year-old perspective. I took a few other liberties with some of the details, but most of the anecdotes recounted here actually happened—in some fashion. In particular, I think this story captures rather accurately what an unmitigated and unrepentant smartass I was. My deep and sincere apologies to you, Grandpa and Grandma, and to everyone else in my family who tolerated me until I finally matured (a little). I love you.

Too Late to Say I Love You

The man was perfect. I watched him through a part in the curtains as he walked slowly up the concrete path. He had a little, Fuller Brush mustache under his nose and a neat, square-shouldered grey suit over his stocky body.

Step-Uncle Jim sat in a folding steel chair with his arms crossed. He looked at his watch and sighed. In the kitchen, his wife hummed and talked to the mixer, the oven, and the open refrigerator.

A grim nod from my father cued the rest of us to stand. The Fuller Brush mustache was at the door. Step-Uncle Jim, his wife, two teenagers, two parents, and a grand­mother squeezed into the limousine.

I needed wood for my two-story treehouse. Dad made me earn the money for nails by mowing the lawn and washing windows. But I ran out of grass and glass before I came close to earning the money for the two 4 x 8 sheets of plywood I would need. So I walked around all week with my hands in my pockets answering, "I could care less," whenever anybody talked.

Then Grandpa came over. He had a whole carload of nice, beautiful, gorgeous, long waterski planks. Dad frowned. My treehouse was on its way.

I measured and sawed and hammered and nailed for a week. "The best treehouse on the block," I bragged to Older Sister.

"The only treehouse on the block," she laughed.

We went over to Grandpa and Grand­ma's for a Fourth of July picnic din­ner. Grandma peeled all the apples she had picked from their backyard for the applesauce; Grandpa was busy with the ice cream crank. Back then, they didn't have electric ice cream makers, so you had to break your arm to make the same dull vanilla they charged 49¢ for in the store.

I ran down to the basement to see if the mousetraps had caught any. I found three pieces of fuzzy green cheese—and an intriguing cardboard box stuck between the rafters and the ceiling. I ran back upstairs to con­jure Dad from beneath Life magazine, and led him into the basement to view my discovery.

"Yes sir," Dad whispered, "that's my old train set."

I made him take it down.

We set it up on the card table outside and ran an extension cord to the dusty transformer from an outlet in the kitchen. For an hour and a half, Mom and Older Sister scowled while Dad and I played with the old trains, laughing and inventing impos­sible track patterns for the limited but challenging twenty pieces. We finally ate dinner and left.

Some friends up the street from our house let us use their beach cabin one weekend. We took Grandpa and Grandma along for their 45th an­niversary. I couldn't see how anyone could live together that long, but I guess Grandma had practice from living with her first husband. Her first husband died when Dad was 12.

I chased Older Sister up some loose rocks with a long, slimy piece of kelp. She screamed and kicked, almost causing an avalanche, as I whipped her brutally with thin air. She was up 30 feet and the kelp was only 10 feet long. But she threatened to tell Mom and Dad that I had said a swear word or something, so I quit.

Grandma and Grandpa came walking along the beach wearing coats and scarves, and I looked down at my sunburnt legs. I thought, Somebody should tell them that the sun is shining, but I knew that they were old and couldn't wear cut-offs and T-shirts. I felt sorry for them.

We rode down to Barnacle Bill's for lunch, and I had some of Grandpa's abalone. I had never heard of abalone before, so I was taking my life in my hands. It was pretty good. I made a joke about the word "abalone" and Grandpa laughed.

In school, I was mainly interested in art and construction. Whenever it came time to paint, I was the first out with the supplies. I took some of my projects home to finish. I had a lot of brushes, paints, and mixing trays that Grandpa had said he had no use for, so I sometimes finished my projects before he other kids had begun. The teachers always called me "creative" because they though I was mixing all the different colors from the paint in the art closet at school. But it might be hard to get Chrysler Blue by mixing powdered green, red, and black watercolors.

I remember being taught to whistle. Dad used to call Older Sis­ter and me for dinner by whistling. We could hear his whistle from about a mile away. There was a girl at school who could whistle almost as loud as Dad. She put her two little fingers in her mouth and blew like a tornado. The teacher made her run two laps one day for whistling in Curt Schnaible's right ear.

I learned how to whistle from Grandpa. He showed me a really cool way to whistle. "You make a cup with your left hand," he demonstrated, "and it's gotta be watertight." He led me over to the kitchen faucet. "You put your first and fourth fingers to­gether, like this, over your second and third," Grandpa said. "Then you put your thumb like this." I tried it and tested it for watertightness.

It leaked about two drops and stopped.

"Good!" Grandpa congratulated, smiling proudly. I began practicing my whistle. At first it sounded like what Dad called "air in the pipes" when the toilets didn't fill up cor­rectly, but eventually I was a regular locomotive. I practiced whistling in school and finally the teachers stopped writing "creative" on my re­port cards.

I left one of Dad's wrenches out in the rain one day. It was a "monkey," ''pipe," or "crescent" wrench, I could never remember which. But that didn't matter after I left it out in the rain. Dad called it ''rusted."

"You'll have to fix your bike with a stick and a rock from now on," Dad said, not exactly smiling. I wanted to get on my bike and ride away, but all I could do was shuffle my feet and count the rocks in the asphalt. I wondered if I would get anything for my birthday the next week.

Two days went by slowly, then it was okay for me to laugh again. I quit using my napkin at the dinner table and forgot to close my eyes when Dad said the prayers. I was back to normal.

My birthday came and there was a whole armchair full of packages. I didn't have any friends over for a party, but there were just as many presents as the year before. I knew, because I counted.

I opened a long, heavy package first. It was a metal tool chest, complete with tools, from Grandpa. Dad smiled.

Mom brought cake and ice cream out to me while I was fixing my bike.

Four summers flashed by, tanning me in the park and teaching me in summer school how to measure the cir­cumference of the earth. I began collecting things that I thought would be valuable someday, like first-edition comic books and old tube ra­dios. Nobody knew about the comic books—I kept those private for in­tellectual purposes—but everyone on the block with an old tube radio also had my phone number. I collected padlocks and broken watches, too.

Christmas was on its way, and I was running low on money. Mom said I should sell all my "junk" so I could afford to buy presents for the family. I realized then where Older Sister got her sense of humor. I told Mom "No," of course, and she looked disgusted.

"What are you getting Grandma and Grandpa for their 50th anniver­sary?" she prodded. I said I didn't know, and made a joke about an IOU. Now Mom really looked disgusted. I went on chewing my gum.

Grandpa and Grandma came over Christmas Eve to bring us our presents. They looked tired as they got out of the car, probably from cooking roast and cinnamon rolls all day like every Christmas I could remember before. I opened the front door for them and put all their packages under the tree.

We had dinner and then gave Grandpa and Grandma their presents. They opened them, and after the usual conversation time from which I could never be excused, Grandpa and Grandma decided to leave. I got one of those looks from Dad saying, "Help them carry their stuff to the car," so I did.

I waved goodbye to Grandpa and Grandma and ran back into the warm house.

Christmas arrived at eight the next morning, to the familiar sound of shredding paper and four loud thank-you's competing all at once. But the others had only begun with their presents while I had narrowed my take down to one. My last package was a heavy one from Grandpa. I shook it a little from side to side, hearing the same sounds I had heard somewhere before, long ago. I ripped it open.

Just then the telephone rang and Mom got up to answer it. But I was too busy to notice; I had just opened another valuable for my col­lection. It was the old trainset. Dad's eyes glowed as he watched my face go from disbelief to pure joy.

Mom came back into the room and her smile was gone.