The road trip I was on when I last posted went swimmingly. From Beaufort I drove southwest to Alma, GA to visit my grandmother. There I spent an evening talking with my grandmother and walking around the town, listening to the quiet noise of a small town. The next day I drove to Atlanta to visit my brother and his wife and my two nephews, Ollie and Stein. There I was confronted by the loud noise of a bustling city. Slept in the bus because there was no room in the inn(a.k.a. my brother's house which is packed to the brim with him and his wife, their two kids, two dogs, and two cats. It was nice to experience the feeling that I was staying with family, but able to provide my own comfort zone in the form of the bus. I got to sing songs with my oldest nephew Stein, and I became infatuated with my younger nephew Ollister's deep blue eyes, which look as if he knows some grand wisdom that his little developing mind can only share through the look in his gaze.
After staying with my brother I traveled to Columbia, taking back roads that led me through a beautiful pasture-land in eastern Georgia that I had never seen before. In Columbia I caught up with my brothers from other mothers, Jake and Jeff, and saw my parents. It was the next day that the fun really began. Basically the entire east coast had been experiencing a long dry spell which ended the day I left my parent's house to drive to my Grandfather's house in Lumberton, NC. The bus doesn't have working windshield wipers, and I didn't think to buy some RainX at the time (I have since), but I was able to get my headlights working. So I spent a good four hours driving through various degrees of downpour, on the back roads of North Carolina at night.
When I crossed the state line into North Carolina it was already raining pretty steady, and as I was driving I passed a parked police car. Soon after passing it I noticed its blue lights flashing behind me. I knew I hadn't been speeding, but I also knew I was driving the all-time-greatest icon for certain "counter-cultural" movements, so in a sense I expected to be pulled over eventually anyways. It turned out that one of my tail lights was out, and after proving to the cop through my words and actions that I was not a threat to the traditional moral and civic fiber of America, he sent me on my way with a word of encouragement to get my tail light working.
After getting lost for about an hour I made it to my Grandfather's house, somewhere around 10 o'clock. My uncle Josiah is staying with my grandfather now, and he welcomed me, albeit sleepily and I settled into the bus for an all-night rain storm. This was the first and only rain storm where I left the pop-top up in my bus, and a lesson I did learn. It didn't allow significant amounts of water into the bus, but it took quite a while to get the bus to not smell damp and dank after that.
I visited the next morning with my Uncle, and I saw my grandfather only briefly, though the moments I shared with him where exceedingly meaningful. My grandfather is now ninety-four, and I am blessed to have been able to spend the time I have spent with him when he was even just a couple years younger. In 2006 I spent a day with him, talking about what he had seen in his life (he lived through WWI, The Great Depression, WWII etc.) and I learned a great deal from him. On this road trip though I realized that my grandfather did not have time to tell me any stories from his youth. Indeed he has entered into a new phase in his life. I would describe it as a process of fading. While i visited with him on this trip he was napping 90 percent of the time I was there, oddly similar to the way my youngest nephew Ollister lives his life right now.
Speaking of Ollister, I made a most enthralling observation when I looked in my grandfather's deep blue eyes. I felt as if I saw the same wisdom that I saw in Ollister's eyes, a real example of "you have your great grandfather's eyes". I don't know what that means, but I found it to be encouraging. My grandfather is by no means sickly, and instead I would describe him as "fading softly". He naps in the house where he raised a family, on the land where he raised crops for most of his life, and he wakes to dine on fried chicken and rice that my Uncle prepares him. He didn't say more than four things to me while i visited. The first thing he said was "I love you". The second thing he said, was "How are your parents?". The third thing he said was to Uncle Josiah, asking him to fill out a check for him as a present to me. The last thing he said to me was "I love you", just before I left for Charleston, and there's not a bone in my body that doesn't ache with joy when I think of my grandfather, drifting off into a deep slumber, slipping away from us space cadets here on God's green Earth.
Well that brings us up to my return to Charleston from Lumberton, a harrowing journey through rain, over bridges and swamps, which brought me safe and sound back to my house/parking space on Beaufain street in downtown Charleston. I will pick up from here very soon, perhaps later today.
No comments:
Post a Comment