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Monday, July 30, 2012

The Ghost At Our Kitchen Table


A ghost sat at our kitchen table when I was a child, a ghost by the name of Grandpa Frank. He was my mother’s father, and he died seventy-six years ago in 1936. How he died always depended on who you asked. Stories range from scarlet fever to an accident brought about by falling from a church steeple he climbed on a dare. I don’t think I’ll ever know, but I have it on several counts that he was an invalid for the last two years of his life.


My mother has refused to let go of her father and carries his memory with her to this very day, speaking of him constantly. As a kid growing up it was as though Mom had fabricated him from a mental matrix, projecting his image at our kitchen table. Mom wasn’t a crackpot, didn’t actually believe he was present, but she’d speak of his exploits and achievements until I thought I could see him sitting in our kitchen with a cup of coffee in his hand.


“Have I told you how much you look like your Grandpa Frank?” Mom would say. “You have his build and curly hair.”


I’d seen the old photographs and never saw much of a resemblance, but one contradicted my mother at their own risk.


“Your grandfather was born in the Azores, but the islands proved too small for him. He came to America with only a handful of dollars in his pockets. (The number of dollars changes with each telling.) He made his living as a professional gambler working the Gold Coast. He had beautiful hands, played the guitar and sang like an angel.”


Mother’s vision of her father was a fantasy, one she heaped with enough attributes to sink the Titanic: He had an amazingly sharp mind, believed in properly educating women and stood up for the rights of the downtrodden. In spite of his lack of formal schooling he was an intellectual and a scholar, a gifted storyteller. He was gentle with his three children but a stern parent with high expectations.


Even as a kid I realized that Grandpa Frank couldn’t have been the Portuguese Superman my mother described, but I did sometimes envision him as a Portuguese Brett Maverick, wearing fancy shirts and slapping cards on baize-covered tables in San Francisco gambling houses. Eventually, I realized that Grandpa Frank was a figment of my mother’s imagination, a fly caught in the web of her thoughts and fantasies. In fact, she knew very little about the father who passed away when she was only nine years old.


But my mother never allowed herself to be confined by facts. (Political discussions with her continue to be a nightmare.) She never questioned her contradictory beliefs about her father. He was whatever she needed him to be to illustrate whatever point she was pounding home.


When I was a kid, trapped in the snare of one of her lectures, her favorite expression was, “On my father’s grave this tyranny shall not stand!” She was only referring to the paperboy’s inability to land the newspaper on our doorstep or being overcharged a dime or two at the grocery store, but invoking the name of Grandpa Frank was her battle cry.


I’m not writing this with the intention of mocking my mother; being raised during the Depression without a father, the baby in an ethnic family and a mere girl to boot, couldn’t have been easy. Few took her seriously back then, and fewer do now. A few days ago I was visiting the retirement home where Mrs. C. and I moved her a few years ago after my father passed. She asked how my blog was going. I told her it was going well.


“That’s good,” she said. “I swear to you on my father’s grave that you got your ability to tell stories from me. I inherited the ability to fascinate people from your grandfather, a fabulous storyteller and a gifted writer with exquisite handwriting.” Strange that none of this writing has ever surfaced, but she continued to tout the Portuguese Charles Dickens who fathered her for the next forty minutes.


As often happens during these visits, I wonder what Grandpa Frank would think if he could see his little girl, now a withered woman of eighty-seven, working so hard to keep his memory alive all these years. Would he recognize himself in her stories?


I can almost see him in the corner of my eye, sitting at the tiny bistro table in Mom’s kitchenette. I imagine him smiling, but he does look tired by it all.


* The photograph shows Grandpa Frank on his wedding day in 1917


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Note: Many of you might not be receiving the replies I'm sending in response to your comments. A few days ago many of these started bouncing back to me. I notice that "NO REPLY" is now included in the return address. If you aren't receiving my replies and you want them, you might check out this blog ; it explains what's going on. I treasure all the comments I receive and wouldn't want anyone thinking I was ignoring them.


CC

41 comments:

  1. That sounds so similar to stories from my mother and grandmother about my grandfather (and sometimes other deceased relatives too). As a kid, I tended to believe everything they told me, and only realized that most of it was impossible when I grew up.

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  2. One of the things I miss most about not having my parents around (or for that matter any of their brothers/sister/cousins) is that there's no one to ask about who someone is in an old photo or any other piece of family history ... embellished or unvarnished ...

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  3. Isee the resemblance. No doubt he was as good a story teller as your mom and as you.

    cranky

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  4. Funny, because when I opened your blog today but BEFORE I read the post, I thought how unusual it is that you are able to make a story out of almost everything. Other people would see a random series of events, but you pull out the story that is hiding there. I have come to the conclusion that you maybe shape your experience in terms of stories - and it is a fabulous gift.

    Could be you inherited that from Grandpa Frank, Perhaps he told your mother all that stuff about himself before he died :D

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  5. So she's kind of built her father up into a Paul Bunyan-type character. You should go to the Azores and go find more information on him or something. Or get on that Ancestry.com thing.

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  6. You definitely have a "storytelling" gene inheritant from someone. I think it is funny that your mother is taking credit for it. You might have gotten some talent for embellishment from her judging from her use of the word "tyranny". Who is resposible for your wonderful sense of humor? (you are so funny!)

    You know...I think it is wonderful that you mother has imagined her father in such a fantastic albeit "enhanced" (probabley) view. Thinking her father was perfect surely enriched her life.

    I met my biological mother as an adult and was so very dissapointed. All the years of growing up I imagined great things but that wasn't the truth of the situation.

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  7. I will always tell the truth about my father. He was a drunk that beat women, believed he was always right, and failed at pretty much every endeavor that he ever tried, because he didn't like to plan and got frustrated way too easy.

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  8. I think every family has one of those relatives that has a big story. In my case, it can be summed up to either my great-grandfather (a spanish count who left the country to go to the islands for some reason) or Columbus (no joke, a professor of mine did a study that traced all people from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic with the last name "Colon" to Columbus' son Diego, who liked to fool around with the slaves from time to time). So those are the two stories from any relatives in my case.

    It's funny how both involve leaving Europe to go to the same island for some reason.

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  9. Gifted writer- yes, so perhaps that is a gift from your Grandpa Frank~

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  10. I don't think you are mocking her. Anyone can hear the love is there underneath the head-shaking. ;) The foibles of the ones we love (who sometimes make us want to pull our hair out) are what we shall remember forever. And when you have little to actually remember...you can embellish, like you mother has.

    I have recently been getting my replies back from comments on my blog, too. From their "mail delivery subsystem" saying they would try again? Never have seen these before and don't know what's going on. You aren't the only one who's had this problem. :(

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  11. While she can't prove her recollection of her father was accurate, without extensive research you can't DISprove it, either. You're probably wise to just let her have her fun, not that you could stop her if you wanted.

    Great story! ;)

    S

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  12. I like your mother. She's holding on to something dear to her...her father. I think it's nice she thinks so much of him.

    I get your replies to my comments. Thanks.

    Have a terrific day. :)

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  13. Yes, I see that smile on his mouth and the twinkle in his eye in my imagination, too.

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  14. I could almost see Grandpa Frank sitting at the table. Very well written. I enjoyed this post!

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  15. What a fascinating post! I think that those who lived through the Great Depression are tougher than we are!

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  16. Little girls need a daddy, and while her stories are over the top, at least by imagining him this way she got some of what she needed.

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  17. I loved your account. There is something particularly heart warming about a mother who reveres her father, as my mother also did. He died when she was 16, which made the loss traumatic, though I was moved by her frequent tellings of how he took her for long walks to discuss how she should be always be a proper young lady. The highlight was his taking her to the capitol city Tea Room for a special luncheon, again stressing proper etiquette and behavior, shortly before his untimely passing. She never forgot. Nor have I.

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  18. A vivid glimpse of how you saw things as a child. Really cool. John's mom had glorified visions of her father, whom she lost to pneumonia when she was a young girl. He had become beatific through her mind's eye, so much so that when John found his grandfather's spittoon and cigar box, she simply denied it all, even the monogram on the cigar box!

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  19. His life will be everlasting through his descendents.

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  20. his legends lives! now even more..in blog land!

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  21. He looks somber, especially considering that's his wedding day. He also looks like a man with stories to tell - a family trait you're doing well to carry forward.

    xoRobyn

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  22. I don't know how much you look like your Grandpa Frank, but it certainly looks like you have inherited the story-telling gene. Telling stories and describing personalities of ancestors was not a priority in my family, so I have basic dates and facts about my recent ancestors, but no stories at all, real or made up.

    I still get your replies to my comments. Thanks!

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  23. I love your mother's spunk....keeping him alive all these years
    and I think you are a better writer for it
    She taught you beginning middle end and a lot of poetic license
    she's a blessing

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  24. Amazing story!I'm sure that as a child you wee most impressed and as time went by slowly began to realize things didn't add up. Interesting that there was this one part of your mother that was irrational and the rest of her was normal.

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  25. Your mother is fulfilling her lifelong need to have her father with her. That's rather touching despite the facts or possible lack thereof. We should all be remembered with such love and devotion. Thanks for sharing this with tenderness and humour.

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  26. This is such a touching story, spun by the grandson of a much needed father to your mother. It is very telling of her desire to keep only good, heroic and interesting tidbits of her truth of him. You are a good son for knowing how important Grandpa Frank was to your mom. Oma Linda

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  27. G'day CC. I loved this account of your mother's perception of her father and the fact that she holds his memory so close in her heart and mind. It really doesn't matter that it may or may not be true, all the things that she said he did, it's that she believed in him, that really matters. A very touching story CC. Take care. Liz...

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  28. Maybe you're channeling grandpa Frank through your writing. :)

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  29. Your mom is definitely a piece of work. I hope that doesn't seem unkind. She just has a lot going on in her mind. She certainly makes for good writing fodder. I've always told my son I gave birth to him so he could be my slave and be fodder for my writing. Your mom must have been really upset and shocked by her father's death when she was so young. I guess it spurred her on to keep him alive.

    Love,
    Janie

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  30. Your mother is a woman after my own heart. Or maybe that should be the other way around.

    With age I find that the stories I tell of my youth change and adapt to the audience currently engaged in the act of feigning interest.

    I can assure you that these 'adaptations' are unintentional but, having said that, I do love to stretch the facts and possibilities to their absolute limit.

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  31. I can definitely see the resemblance. What a story! It's really something your mom held on to this for so long. Hopefully it gives her some comfort.

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  32. I love the idea of a Portuguese Brett Maverick! Your mom's stories about your grandfather are great--maybe she needs her own blog. :) Thanks for sharing the photo. It's wonderful! I love old photographs--definitely a story in each one.

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  33. She doesn't comment on her monther, just her dad? (and granddad)

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  34. It was fascinating, the way you put it. The poor girl seems to have missed the father she couldn't quite have. And she goes on missing him. I am happy your writing abilities gave her some cause to be proud eventually.

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  35. now this is really interesting as we spent a day in Hawkinsville California with a bunch of older Azore Portuguese folks-they are about your mothers age. Their relatives came here to mine the gold
    and this generation reveres their ancestry and history. Most of the men were veterans of WWll and were fascinating to talk to. I'll bet some of them knew your Grandfather. Here's the blog link to that day: http://katheworsley.blogspot.com/2012/06/112th-holy-ghost-festival-in.html

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  36. Your grandfather was born in the Azores? How cool is that? I deployed there with the Navy in the 80s (Lajes, on the island of Terceira). My squadron was also deployed in Rota, Spain and we sent a few crews over to keep any eye on any Soviet submarines who wanted to go visit the Med. I loved the Azores. The people were friendly, the land was beautiful, and the weather was much more preferable to Spain (where it was hot as balls).
    I can see a resemblance between you and he, though. Well, except for the hat. And the glasses. And the goatee. And did I say the hat? But, you're a dead ringer for him.

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  37. i don;t know your mother but it seems as a way to comfort herself she may have woven fanciful stories of a man larger than life so she could carry a strong father with her even in his absence.

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  38. Well-told and amusing, as always!

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  39. Hi... I just blog hopped around a bit today and found your post. I love it. I love your mother and I love your grandfather. I understand exactly how your mother has developed this beautiful picture of her dad, so strong that you understand it too. I hope you tell wonderful stories about her too....Thanks for giving me a great big smile today. Best wishes...I shall pop in again, Janice.

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  40. Can't figure out why I can't get your newest post to load, for some reason this blog does that to me..... Hmmmmmmmm.. But I am happy because I love this story you tell of your Grandpa Frank. Very dashing young man by the way. How nice you came across your writing abilities from your Mother who got them from her father who got them from ???

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