Keeping it Real: My Grandfather

So I found myself thinking about my grandfather last night.  Actually, I found myself utterly sidetracked by my grandfather last night, which means the only recourse for me, obviously, is to write it out - sort of like hugging it out or dancing it out, just a bit less agressive.

Anyway. My Poppy was a photographer - a pretty great photographer in fact, who at one point apprenticed at a small studio in Brooklyn in the hopes of opening up his own studio one day.

my grandfather; photographer extraordinaire!

Which was of course when World War II happened, because there's nothing the universe loves more than leveling your expectations; best laid plans and all.

So Poppy went to war instead of photography school and became the official/unofficial photographer of U.S.S. Missouri, snapping photos all over the boat, getting in his jollies whenever and wherever he could. My Dad and I actually found some of his photos in an old paper album; shots of of the deck crew, tools in hand, hats askew, cigarettes hanging languidly from their smirks. They were smiling, likely at some terrible joke my grandfather told because my grandfather was always telling really terrible jokes. Specifically, he liked to tell the same jokes over and over and over - at least often enough that the rest of us really should have known better.

Happy men on deck

I'd like to think Poppy made life at least a little better for everyone even if his job as a sailor had never been to take pictures or make godawful jokes. But then, my grandfather was  the definition of Just Make It Work. And he didn't just make it work - he made it work with a smile and a stupid joke that somehow managed to infect everyone. I mean, here were all these frightened men who had just been thrown together, who would have never even met otherwise, who knew they were all sailing toward certain death, whose lives had just been ripped to pieces and turned upside down and then, at the end of it, were told to just make it work. Just make the best of it, sailors! -- just deal with the shit and the horror and the fear and deal with it fast, all best laid plans set aside-- because now you don't have a choice. And anyway, you also don't even know how long you'll have. And there was my grandfather in the middle of all that, snapping photos of his friends, making silly faces behind the camera and bad jokes about the Japanese.

The Japanese surrender--a photo my grandfather wasn't supposed to take but took anyway.

He wasn't the fastest or the strongest. He wasn't the bravest or the smartest. But he was funny and he was kind and he was always taking those pictures, and sometimes I think that was more valuable. Sure he never made any great navy rank. And sure, it wasn't the life he'd chosen for himself but it was the life he ended up living, and he was always happy to be living it. And I guess that's the lesson I've been obsessing over, the one I've been trying to beat into my own head: Best laid plans don't matter much against the harsh glare of reality, where whatever is meant to happen will happen. But maybe, MAYBE, just maybe.... if you trust in yourself and you trust in the things you love, reality will deliver you where you're supposed to go. Even if you didn't think that was the place you were meant to be at all.

I keep thinking about this one thing, wondering what my grandfather would think of the life I ended up living, and how far that life ended up from the one I had planned.

Years after the war, my grandfather opened up a card store on Long Island. Sure it wasn't the photography studio he always dreamed of but he loved stocking all the toys and the cards and the candy. He loved knowing all the names of everyone in the neighborhood. He loved that they all got their magazines and newspapers from him and that he knew all their favorite lotto numbers by heart. He wasn't the richest man nor was he famous, and he never at any point owned any more than that tiny card store, but he was happy.

Poppy and me. By six  years old I knew how to work both the lotto machine and the register

On my grandmother's birthday every year, Poppy would pull his favorite card from the inventory and give it to her with a shy smile. She would open the fresh white envelope and inevitably I would hear her say, in her agressive Brooklyn accent, "Carl, there's nothing written in this damn card."

"But do you like it?" He'd give her a kiss on the cheek. "You think it's nice?"

"Yes," my grandmother would say. "It's very nice."

"Good," he'd say, "Now put it back on the shelf, I have to sell that."

Same joke every year, same reaction every year, and that's exactly how he wanted it. Poppy loved his life as it was. He loved that we would laugh and then groan and then we'd all go back to what we were doing before. The dog would curl up on the newspapers, my cousins and I would climb up onto the tall stool to work the register. My grandmother would go next door to Pete's and get him an Egg Cream and a burger for lunch, and life would be perfect just that way. It wasn't the hand he was dealt, nor was it the hand he'd asked for; it was the hand he ended up with, although if anyone ever asked him, he'd say he had a full house, had always had a full house, and he'd say it without ever having to look down at his cards.

I hope one day when I grow up (and I assume eventually I will grow up) I am half as strong as my Poppy: The Dude Who Really Was Happy Just To Be Alive. And with conviction one day I'll be able to say-- even if the hand I've been dealt seems bad, even if that hand seems hopeless, even if I don't know where the next cards will come from or how they will fit with the hand I already have, "It's okay, I have a full house."