On top of the TV in my living room is a white picture frame with rough elementary penmanship in bright primary colors declaring “I Y Grampa!” The picture of a man in late 70’s wearing red suspenders and sitting on a gravestone bearing the name ADAMS.
Several people who see this photo as they walk through my living room gape and ask, horrified, if that is my grandfather’s own grave. I grin, and ask, “Isn’t it funny?” Most people do not see the same hilarity in the picture as my grandfather and I.
What has long been known as “The Adams Humor” has been passed down from my grandfather to my father to me. Off-key and often incomprehensible to outsiders, this sense of humor bonds us in all situations. There is no ill in this world that cannot be solved by a tee-hee-inducing play on words.
The first time I went fishing was with Grampa. I must have been about eight or nine. We went out in his boat off Martin’s Point in Friendship, Maine. I caught a mackerell, but I was not strong enough to reel it in by myself. It was dehooked and put in a bucket. I caught the hook with my fingertip. I did not panic, but patiently waited for Grampa to remove it.
Grampa remembers amazing things. He remembers the street he grew up on. He remembers every store, every shopkeeper, every dog, and every person on every porch. The details are refined, and even colors and names of stores he never went into are flawless. My favorite thing is to listen to him remember, and wanting to have such a wonderful gilded birdcage of a mind to hold tight the details yet to let them still flutter.
It seems to me impossible to articulate the love I have for this man. Whenever I am near him Fourth of July sparklers fizz and spit in my chest. In the golden glow of the lamp in his living room the world lasts forever. He is immortal in these moments, no matter oxygen tubes in his nose that he fiddles with. No matter assorted medications decorating the table. No matter that when he was born the Dead Sea was only sick. No matter at all because Grampa is perfect.
It seems odd to me that one that I adore to such level is more commonly known as an exceedingly grumpy and unpleasant old fart. But, he isn’t to me. My aunt Cheryl once told me, with a great deal of hesitation, that I was very much like him. She could not explain how that was, but it just is.
Yes, my grandfather probably is an old poop, but how many old poops do you know with beers named after them? One of my grandfather’s dearest friends is the owner of Atlantic Brewing Company in Bar Harbor. Brother Adam beer is named after my grandfather.
When I was in fifth grade I did a project on the Sioux. I made a scene with a bunch of pipe-cleaner Indians. With the pipe cleaners I had left over, I made a little man sitting on a chair. I cut out a small piece of paper and folded it in half, then bent his little pipe cleaner hands around it. I put the man, chair, and tiny newspaper in a shoebox, and wrote detailed, illustrated directions on how to sit the man in the chair and put the newspaper in his hands. I gave the pipe cleaner man and his accessories to my grandfather for Christmas. Eleven years later the man is still on his desk reading the paper, next to the slip of paper that declares, “My aunt’s from Brazil, you know, where the nuts come from!”