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| Xander and the ghost of my Grandpa - Oct 2004. 2 minutes old. |
f a m i l y t r e e
f a m i l y t r e e
My Dad grew up with a really old dad. By the time I came around, I only knew him as an old guy who wandered around randomly cooking stuff and not really saying anything all that coherent. Funny how you see the future all your life. As a matter of fact, the minute Xander was born, that was the first thought I had. He looked exactly like my Grandpa as I remember him - wrinkled forehead and frizzy wisps of hair and that toothless smile that somehow seemed to hint at grumpiness just beneath the surface. I haven't seen the ghost of Grandpa in Xander since then, but I just recently saw a pic of the old guy when he was about 40 and his resemblance to me was uncanny. Skinny, frizzy headed wop with the same frown lines and wrinkled little eyes.
He was born outside Palermo, Sicily in 1894 so that picture (wish I had it to post now) was taken in 1934 - a good third of a century before I came along and a decade before my Dad was born. The occasion of the photograph was a celebration of his accomplishment. My Grandpa had just set some sort of record, I'm embarrassed to say I don't have any documentation of it, but the photo referenced a party in honor of Dominick Fish setting the record for the most coal loaded by hand in a single workday.
So when Grandpa was my age, it was the mid 1930's and he was an accomplished laborer in the coal mines of Fayette County - a job that any of us from around here know must've been pretty tough. Besides that, he and his wife raised a total of 12 children as they lived a life very close to the land. They grew, raised or hunted most of their own food, made their own bread in an outside stone oven, made pasta, brewed beer, made wine from the grapes they grew. This wasn't "DIY" or "project work" like it is for me. This was their real life.
In the ways I would hope to be like my stock, I somehow fall short. In the ways I would hope to be different, I struggle also. One thing is similar though. My son is in danger of growing up with an old Dad. Of course, there is only one of him as opposed to a dozen, and I still managed to shave a decade off the generation gap my Dad and Grandpa had to live with (and all too soon, without).
I have been the recipient of much benefit from the legacy of my Grandfather's hard labor and progenic success. Right now I feel the luckiest to be 43 years old and still have my own Father firmly stationed here in this world, cooking, drinking beer, loving my mom and answering his cell phone every single time I call.
Labels: family, fatherhood, legacy, success
