Jukebox Gin Jazz
By the time you are reading this, it has been one year and two days since my Grandfather passed away. I miss him dearly and so much has happened in the year since his passing. I wish I was able to call and tell him about it all, but I cannot so instead here as follows whatever this is. I write a bit about my time I spent with him the summer after I graduated college, here you can find something I wrote during my time there that I really adore. Thank you for reading.
Jazz, Gin Rummy, and Roy Orbison remind me of my Grandfather. After I graduated college, I went to stay with him in Alaska for a little over a month. It was the most time I had spent with my Grandfather. I would drive him around Soldotna and we sang along with Roy, “Anything you want, you got it.” That summer I would wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning, walk to my Aunt’s lodge two doors down river, help her make breakfast for almost 15 guests before they went on fishing trips, then go back to my Grandpa’s place. I would fall asleep again, then wake up (again) a few hours later. He would be watching the financial news with the dogs and then join me for coffee. We made grocery lists. Tended to the greenhouse. Picked raspberries, strawberries, and rhubarb. Checked guests into his RV park. Went fishing. Take the dogs to the dog park. Make dinner. Set the table. Then play Gin Rummy. He was tasked with teaching me how to play, so upon my return to California I would play against my Grandmother. When we played Gin Rummy every night he poured himself a scotch and poured me a tequila neat. I would play him my jazz playlist and he was impressed. He told me about his college days when he was in a jazz band or about the times growing up when his Mother managed the movie theater so he would run the film reels. Maybe it is ironic or rather bittersweet, but I still have not played Gin Rummy with my Grandmother.
In between the day punctuators of berry picking and errand running, my Grandfather and I would often fish off his dock or take a boat ride or he would sneak over to my Aunt’s house and play his piano. There was lots of time spent together with not much said. We would sit on his docked boat accompanied by his two dogs, Minnie and Papi, and the turquoise Kenai River.
Habits and good for you regimens were Papa’s way of life. Celebrations consisted of a homemade meal paired with really great wine, and probably ended with a cigar and some good conversation. He used to say my Father was the smartest man he ever met, and we used to say that my Grandfather was the hardest working man you’d ever meet. Even his last day was spent mowing the lawn. He mowed until he couldn’t. He laid himself down to rest in a bed of dandelions and that was it.
A year from the worst news I have received, my family and I coping-ly joked that of course he died in the perfect way. We also selfishly wish he was here. He left us before we were ready and I recognize there is never a good time to die, but he really did it too soon. I do not know if I have ever missed someone so much. I wish I could call him on a Tuesday night and tell him what I made for dinner and have him ask me about work and then I would tell him about it and then he would ask me about imminent weekend plans and I would tell him what those are and then he would ask about dating and I would tell him and then he would chuckle.
Our last conversation was over the phone. I was finishing up Flight Attendant training in Seattle and he was in Alaska. He was my co-signer on my current apartment. At the time, I had not physically seen the apartment I was to move into and had not met the girl I was supposed to live with. From what I can barely remember, we talked budgeting and 401k plans and stock options. We also talked about the division between Southern and Northern California, he warned me “people up there are not as nice as they are down South.” To that I am happy to say he was wrong. The end of the conversation floated around my own habits. He was proud that I liked to cook and how I was a good baker (he especially found it interesting that I put apple cider vinegar in my pie crust). He figured that the attributes of being good at housekeeping are frugal and thus a good financial habit. It is funny to know for certain, although lack the actual memory of saying “I love you” to him on the phone, for the last time.
I have felt my adult life starting to grow legs and I wish he could be here to see it. I know people say things along the lines that our loved ones are “looking down at us”, but frankly it does not suffice. Selfishly, I want the Tuesday night phone call, but all I have are old voicemails and photographs. I have the story of the day I was born and how my Grandfather speedily pushed my Mother throughout the hospital in a wheelchair, while nurses scolded “no running.” It is a bizarre thing to begin to make memories and have holidays that exist in a world without him.
The other night we celebrated Jake gaining another year under his belt. I baked a cake and lit a match for him to make a wish on. I sliced the cake, handing the pieces wrapped in napkin to a long table full of familiar faces. That night we danced till the wee hours of the morning to the songs on a jukebox. It was the kind of night that while it is happening the minutes are made up of 61 or 62 seconds and gravity weighs a little less than normal. It was a moment. Palpable, sure, but really it was remarkable–something that while you are in it you are already nostalgic.
Sometimes I begin to mourn the days I find myself in because I am so used to the good times coming to a close. (I hate curtain calls, but I love encores). The future freaks me out. Not for the unsureness of who I am and what am I going to do or what it is that I like todo, but because when you are a woman, and a young one at that, there are parts of you that you can choose to access or not, and thus choose to live or not. I have begun to cling to my current state of youth. Seizing it because I do not know when it will go away—or when you will go away for that matter. I think of the things I will supposedly tell my potential future children. I could tell them about the time I lived in San Francisco and how this one night we danced till 2am listening to a jukebox and when “Twist and Shout” came on, we all exploded. I will tell them about my Grandfather and the summer I spent with him, and how he beat me at Gin Rummy and how he loved jazz and then I will probably play them “You Got It” by Roy Orbison.
