RS: Seven Year Itch

Ray Sexton was my grandfather. Saturday was his birthday. He’s been dead 7 years now.

I always wanted to be like him when I grew up. He was a great man. Great, lower-case g. The world didn’t know him; but those who did knew a man of incredible generosity, though not a man of wealth, one of those shirt-off-your-back kind of guys. He built the longest swinging bridge in the county. As you walk across it, you wonder how on earth he did it. Much of his life was lived the same way. He supported 7 children on what is unquestionably the rockiest farm known to man. And that swinging bridge, so pivotal to the industry of the rock quarry when built, now leads to nowhere, outgrown and outdated. That too could have been a metaphor for his life. He never had much to speak of—a field of abandoned cars overrun by weeds and good intentions, a modest home run down over years of neglect and rowdy children, and way too many peacocks, creatures as annoying as they are beautiful. He was also beloved by every one of his grandchildren, without exception.

He was the gentle giant to my grandmother’s rabid dog. My only memories of her in my childhood are of her screaming. She seemed to always be angry at the world and often at us kids or at the spouses of her own kids, who to her just happened to be the only 7 perfect human beings ever to lurch across the planet. (If we're grading on a curve, the planet is indeed in peril.) She was also desperately afraid of being alone. But it was my grandmother, Mabel, who kept things going. She brought paddled behinds into my grandfather’s world of patted heads.

My grandparents didn’t sleep together. They had separate beds for as long as I can remember and often barely tolerated the other’s existence. But they loved each other with a fierce loyalty. She must have resented that he was unconditionally loved while she was actively avoided. The entire family teetered near collapse in 1990 when my grandfather suffered a massive heart attack and required quintuple by-pass surgery. He was not expected to live.

I was on the road, in a children’s tour of Babes in Toyland, playing a seven year old in lederhosen and tights. I was hovering just above the poverty line, unable to muster the airfare home or get out of my tour commitment. I did all I had the power to do. I sat down and wrote a song, a crude melody croaked into a tape recorder and sent with fingers crossed that it would get there in time for him to hear. The words came in about 20 minutes:

GRANDPA’S GENTLE HANDS
I remember when I was four, creeping through the door
Of the house of the man with the pipe and the La-Z-Boy chair.
And he reached out his hands to me, to lift me to his knee,
For a ride on my favorite horse that was going nowhere.

And I felt Grandpa’s gentle hands holding on,
Making me feel like nothing could ever go wrong.
And though I didn’t think too much
About the love in Grandpa’s touch,
It seemed to say to me, “Hold on, be strong.”

I remember when I was ten, creeping through the door again,
Hiding from the man whose pipe had just disappeared.
And I closed my eyes and cried, because a chair’s no place to hide,
And later I’d be found asleep in those arms I had feared.

And I felt Grandpa’s gentle hands holding on,
Making me feel like nothing could ever go wrong.
And though I didn’t think too much
About the love in Grandpa’s touch,
It seemed to say to me, “Hold on, be strong.”

I remember a year ago, the years had begun to show,
And his face looked worn like the arms of that La-Z-Boy chair.
Though I was too big for his knee, he reached out his hand to me;
And I thanked God for the man whose love had always been there.

And I felt Grandpa’s gentle hands holding on,
Making me feel like nothing could ever go wrong.
And though I didn’t think too much
About the love in Grandpa’s touch,
It seemed to say to me, “Hold on, be strong.”

And though he is so far away, if I could be with him today,
I would hold his hand and say, “Hold on, be strong.”

He lived another decade, in a fairly sad physical state, but delighted every time he saw me in telling me how much he loved that song. He considered it one of the greatest gifts he ever received. I sang it at his funeral. It is the proudest moment of my life about which I have no memory. In his final years, my grandmother stopped screaming and is now one of the most loving and gentle people in my life. Aside from the chewing tobacco, she bears no resemblance to the woman she once was. But she is still terrified of being alone.

My grandfather treated my grandmother with accommodating hands, relenting hands, not necessarily gentle hands. And that is where a great man became all too human. When my uncle (their youngest child) was in fifth grade, he stopped going to school. When the truant officer came to visit, my grandfather told him there was nothing they were going to teach him that would help him nearly as much as working the farm. Despite threats of legal action, my uncle never returned to school. With that, my grandmother would never again be alone. The decision was not without its consequences.

He sexually molested a fair number of us nieces and nephews, perhaps because he too was alone and lonely. I don’t think my grandparents ever considered that this son would have needs and urges that would demand fulfilling, regardless of access. He has become a pathetic, unkempt, unsocialized, porn-addicted freak—a bundle of needs, no longer with access, in no small part because all us nieces and nephews know better now. My grandmother is well into her nineties, in poor health, and grateful beyond belief not to be alone—it never occurred to her that when she died, her precious Dwain would be.

It was a mistake and irresponsible of my grandparents to keep my uncle home from school. Not as much because of what he would become as what he might have been, might have developed into. I have no idea if he was a monster in the making or a desperate man who made monstrous decisions. I’m not sure it matters. A forest fire burns just as hot whether the match was struck in anger or by accident, and the earth gets scorched exactly the same.

But my grandfather, great and gentle as he was, gets some blame for what happened. I tell myself in my grown up moments that it no longer matters. But I didn’t inherit my grandpa’s gentle hands. I’ve scorched a fair amount of my own earth, and I can’t help but wonder who put the match in my hands. Whatever my uncle’s responsibility, I know with absolute certainty that my grandmother’s funeral will be the last time I will be in his presence. I’ve smiled through my last Christmas, gritted my teeth through his last dirty joke, and glared across a room, feeling a phantom hand pushing down on the back of my head for the last time. I will not miss him for a moment. It would not surprise me at all if he were to blow his brains out shortly after the funeral. It would not bother me at all either. It may not be entirely his fault what happened, but it is completely his fault what he did.

I have heard that our cells completely regenerate every seven years. That means I am a completely different person today than when my grandfather died. I wish he could meet me now. All too human to all too human. I feel different. Maybe not completely regenerated but different. More wound up than wounded. And ready to forgive him. And ready to tell him that he needs forgiving. I would tell him I love him. Tell him I respect him. But also tell him that I wish he’d treated us all with a little firmer hand so that we might have treated ourselves with some of that gentleness he doled out so effortlessly.

Today, I went to see my therapist for our quarterly tune up and prescription renewal. We typically chat about nothing in particular. I was rambling, filling the time until we exchanged signatures. He stopped me and asked me to close my eyes and envision myself as a child feeling alone. It was surprising that an image came to me immediately. It was me sitting in a large, brown, Naugahide, faux La-Z-Boy that used to sit by itself alongside a wall in my parent’s living room. I couldn’t envision my face, just a nine-year-old arm resting on a chair, rocking gently watching television. I could see the right side of the room perfectly, the other side was blacked out. We did a lot of symbolic, Kumbaya stuff about “little Rodney” and “detached Rodney” that ended up with a very clear vision of that same brown chair, that same little arm, then with an identical little arm appearing, draped over “little Rodney’s” little shoulder. He then asked that “little Rodney” collect all his needs, get up and sit on “big Rodney’s” lap. Suddenly, the left side of the room came into vision, there I was sitting on the couch and this little person got up out of the chair and walked over to me and crawled up on my lap. Odd thing was, nothing but that one arm ever came into view. I opened my eyes just seconds ahead of the Schmaltz Police, ready to cuff me for felonious metaphor.

Perhaps my grandfather lives on a bit in me. Perhaps my hands have regenerated in kind. Perhaps none of it does matter.

So, on my grandfather’s birthday, I’m ready to treat my memories a bit more gently and see him for what he was, a great man who made some incredible mistakes. I always wanted to be like him when I grew up. I’m half way there—I’ve made some incredible mistakes. In another 7 years, well, who knows?