I Miss My Papa

My mom died a few years ago. As I expect is the case whenever a parent dies, there is a shitload of clutter and files through which one must sort. Here's a treasure I discovered recently.

As you can see from the image at the bottom of this post, Papa (my grandfather, my mom's father) sent me a $2 bill in 1976. At the time my family was living in Pennsylvania, not in our home state of Massachusetts. It was a year before my parents would be divorced and I would be brought back to Massachusetts, and then develop a personal relationship with Papa.

For this post to make sense, you need to know a bit about Papa. He was a WWII combat veteran (who lied about his age to join the Navy), a Great Depression era orphan, 100% Irish, angry, a man of extremely few words, and from what I've heard was respected yet feared by all of his six children. My mom was his eldest.

I don't know why, but Papa and I had a special relationship. We simply got along well. There's no explaining it. I'm hesitant about discussing this publicly because my relatives might read this and be uncomfortable, but I think that my mother and all of her siblings were jealous about the attention Papa gave to me. He was kind of a dick to his kids. No, not "kind of" a dick. He was a dick. I have rarely heard anything but horrible stories. But with me, Papa was nothing but attentive, caring, and nurturing. I had a very different relationship with him than his children.

Perhaps he softened in his "old age." My memories of Papa are wonderful and fond. He used to take me on adventures (bars) from when I was 8 years old and onward, wake me up to play cribbage at 2:00 in the morning when I slept over at his house, and tell me stories about his life experiences. And yes, he was an accomplished drinker. I cut my teeth on Schlitz "tall boys" before my age reached double digits. I'm motivated to go find a six pack today.

Tangent ... stick with me ... Papa pretended to hate it when I kissed him. My sister and I used to play a game wherein we would "sneak up" to kiss him on the back of the neck. He'd make a big scene by shrugging up his shoulders, waving his arms, and shouting "AAAAARGH GOD DAMN IT YOU KIDS!" This would go on repeatedly for an hour.

I miss my Papa a lot right now. He used to hug me in a way I shall never forget, ever never ever never. He would crouch down, wrap his arms around me, squeeze, and then stand upright while hugging me. I clearly remember his scent (like an old-fashioned barber shop), the feel of his slender yet muscular arms, and I was giggling because my feet were so far off the ground. And because I was in my Papa's arms.

Okay, I'm mustering myself back to adulthood.

Back to the point of this post. I'm trying to think about how to explain to you why this gift is so strange and treasured by me.

I guess it's that Papa never did anything. He was a grumpy old bastard, had a hard life, had six kids and didn't do so well as a father. Sending me this note and a $2 bill is waaaaaay out of character.

He had a heart of gold and discovered it too late. Maybe he found out what he was missing once he had a grandson. The note is so strange because he proactively did something frivolous for me, and signed it "Love, Papa." This was before he really knew me.

I feel as if I'm failing miserably to explain to you how strange this is. This is the most poorly written post in the five years I've been Blogging. It's all over the place, doesn't flow, and ... just ugh.

*shrug*

I don't care what anybody else thinks. He was a good man. Papa and I got along. That's my conclusion, and I'm sticking with it. I miss my Papa a lot.

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