I have been hiking and I am tired. I lie down on the edge of a grassing opening in the forest. Spring lingers at this altitude and the ground is covered with blossoming dandelions. The surrounding forest is of aspen trees and they are newly leafed out and vibrant with that particular bright green of spring. The leaves are quaking with a gentle breeze and the treetops sway as if dancing to a hymn they sing to themselves. The creek is high from snowmelt and I hear its song clearly. It fills the air. It smells good here. It sounds good and is beautiful to see. The sky is an incredibly beautiful blue edged by the distant dark green conifer-covered ridges, snow-capped peaks, and the nearby aspens.
I am really tired and lean my head against a tree trunk and close my eyes. I could sleep but think of my grandfather Harry, my father’s father, and one memory leads to another. He died like this sitting against a tree trunk one night in a wooded area of Pennsylvania. My father had gotten him a job as a night watchman in the same summer camp where I was working as a waiter. He had recently retired from being a plumber in Brooklyn. It is strange how I have gotten to know him better through my memory than I did as a child and teenage. He didn’t interact with us kids much and my grandmother would most often visit by herself. He was a gruff sort of person. I was growing up in white suburbia and he had a lot of dirt beneath his fingernails. His blood runs through me but I didn’t have a heartfelt understanding of what that meant while he still lived.
He was born somewhere in the Ukraine and escaped the persecution of the pogroms against the Jews at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was a child then. I heard the telling of their escape and immigration to Canada and, for some, to the United States from his mother, my great-grandmother, one of three great-grandmothers of mine that I was privileged to know. My father and I were visiting her in Toronto. They traveled at night, dependent on others to guide them. It was hard and dangerous. One of her sons drowned at a river crossing. Harry was carried across the current on someone’s back.
Later in my life I would reflect upon and lament the scarcity of shown affection in my immediate family. More hugs would have been nice, but that just wasn’t the way it was. Now I get a glimpse of something else; of a tree growing through persecution, of immigration, of economic depression, the hustle of New York City street life and of people struggling for a better life, one that avoided some of the sufferings they lived through. And I see hugs and “I love you”s packaged in providing a stable home life, a decent education, and regular visits to a doctor or dentist. My gratitude to all those whose blood and hard work, care, and love enlivens me now. Thank you. I include the nameless man who swam with my grandfather on his back.
Harry’s job at the camp included keeping us teenage boys from getting over to the girl’s side. It is an old story. Remember the Trojan horse? Where there is a will there is a way, and he probably never stopped any of us through either his design or ours. Sometimes we traveled through the woods and sometimes we would travel by ‘borrowed’ rowboat. The girls always welcomed us and we would spend hours whispering and making out in their cabins. I remember clearly seeing him sitting up against a tree in the dark of the night, sleeping or smoking a cigar. It might have been that I saw him the night he died of a heart attack. I might be merging memories but most importantly I remember him being happy out there, away from the city and whatever his life in Coney Island was like. I see him being content and at ease as if that long journey from the Ukraine was always headed to this spot on the shore of a lake under the night’s stars with kids all around, a cheap cigar, and no one to pester him. It was a good death and it is a good memory. Go with peace grandfather.
