The grandfather I wrote about last month made his living in journalism. That makes it sound clean and easy, which it was not. He scrambled through the childhoods of his first six or seven children, picking strawberries, snapping pictures, and any odd job he could rustle up. It wasn't until the last five were born that Pop Pop found his rhythm as a writer for the largest newspaper in Philadelphia. His success brought the attention of dignitaries and famous people who routinely had their selfie, I mean photograph, taken with Don Rose. Like Jimmy Stewart.

 

But an earlier slice of his life shows through in letters he wrote as a fifteen year old boy in jolly old England. He had left school to earn wages, presumably to support his family, and pined at the hope of traveling to America to study for the ministry. When I hold up such aspirations next to those of the average sophomore boy in 2019, which I probably shouldn't but I do, I see... discrepancies. He rode his bike to work, and worked hard when he arrived. His letters were handwritten and upwards of ten or twenty pages long. His penmanship was worthy of the ink well. He collected postcards. 

 

It took him a few years to save up enough for the voyage, so by the time he was eighteen he was indeed headed west to the small town where I live, and the young girl who would win his heart. Marjorie. 

 

It is a marvelous exercise in wonderment to hear about the man who fathered my mother. Without whom I would not exist. While I can stretch my imagination to encompass life in the beginning of the last century, I have not lived it. There are three cars in my driveway, and six phones plugged in at night. The kiwis in my fruit bowl came from below the equator, and the music that fills my living room was played by people I will never meet in another time zone. My daughter traveled this week to Spain, arriving in hours not days, and will send me texts about her adventures. Aurelle will have traveled both ways across the Atlantic, bookending a memorable experience, in less time that it took my grandfather to cross once. Aurelle's name is the same as Marjorie's little sister. 

 

Yet in other ways Pop Pop's life and my own are remarkably congruent. We fell in love. We had families. We wept and laughed. We composed stories, though his were generally longer with illustrations rather than digital pictures. We suffered heartbreak, and felt the flooding joy of new life. 

 

But the niggling question behind my eyes is about similarities and differences that will appear in the lives of my grandchildren. His great great grands. Self driving cars seem likely. Then again bicycles may have a comeback. 

 

Yet the constants will still make an appearance like recurring themes. Olympia will, God willing, have dreams of how she wants to embody goodness. Fall in love with a man who makes her laugh. Certainly not have a dozen children, like Pop Pop and Grandma, but maybe a couple who will divide her heart like pie. 

 

Maybe she will be a storyteller too.