Loree Lough

Walking with Grandpa

As Grandpa and I walked the slanting, cracked sidewalks of his aging Wisconsin neighborhood, he’d often take his gold watch from a tiny vest pocket. I held my breath, not wanting to miss the tiny ping when opened. “You know,” he admitted one day, “I paid way too much for this old thing.”

I looked up into his handsome, broad-jawed face and waited for the explanation that would follow:

“Your old grandpa can be a sentimental old fool sometimes.” Chuckling, he repocketed the timepiece. “Goddfrieson the jeweler had a hard time of it after the war, him being German and all. The watch isn’t worth half what I paid for it, but he needed the money more than I did, with seven kids to feed….”

A week earlier, my Social Studies teacher had lectured, “We are all descended from immigrants; it doesn’t matter where you started out, only where you end up…so treat everyone as your equal.” I slipped my hand into Grandpa’s, heart thumping with love and pride, knowing he’d lived those words.

The blister rubbed onto my heel while hiking to Grandpa’s was quickly forgotten as I learned the history of the watch:

He’d bought it the day he became an American citizen, keeping it in his top bureau drawer at first, safe in its black-velvet drawstring pouch. “Then one week, my team at the mattress factory fell behind by five units.” The men, he explained, depended on small weekly bonuses paid to top-producers…quarters and half dollars that bought warm socks for ever-growing children’s feet, an extra potato for the soup kettle…. “I brought the watch to work, and when we ‘timed’ our work, boy, were we fast!”

His constant desire to see others’ needs met reminded me of a bitter winter day when Lady Luck provided bus fare for my trip to Grandpa’s. A woman about my mother’s age slid onto the brittle brown seat beside me and sing-songed, “Well, if it isn’t Frank Citerony’s granddaughter!”

Before I could respond, she said, “What a wonderful man he is. When I was a little girl, your grandfather fed my family for nearly a year.” Staring straight ahead, she nodded, as if reliving his kindness, right there on the cold, crowded bus. “We rented the upstairs apartment of your grandfather’s house, and my dad hurt himself at the factory, couldn’t work for months.” She patted my knee. “But your grandpa….he refused to take a penny. And nearly every day, he was up before dawn, hunting rabbits for our stewpot until my father was back at work.”

I’d only heard Grandpa complain once…when Nonna served pot pie made with rabbit meat. “I won’t eat it,” was his stern protest. When I asked why, he said, “Because it’s practically all I ate as a boy. To me, it tastes like horse shit.” His merry laughter ballooned into the air, startling birds into noisy song. “Some day when you’re older, maybe I’ll tell you how I know what horse shit tastes like….”

As the woman waved goodbye from the front of the bus, she said, “Tell your grandfather Paula Kovach says hello, and thank you.”

I took my time getting from the bus stop to Grandpa’s back porch, for Mrs. Kovach had given me much to think about. As I wondered what other secret good deeds Grandpa had done, I remembered another example of his innate goodness….

It was a time when children were seen and not heard, making us privy to conversations not meant for tender ears. During a whispered conversation over coffee and biscotti, I overheard Mom tell Grandpa how our next-door neighbor routinely beat his wife, kept her locked in the house like a prisoner. I woke the following morning, surprised to see Grandpa’s Oldsmobile parked in the Smith’s driveway instead of ours. A hot breeze blew the filmy curtains of my bedroom window against my kid-sweaty face as I sat, nose-to-screen, hoping to hear a bit of that conversation, as well.

I couldn’t, of course, and curiosity bristled within me as I imagined their man-to-man talk…because every day after, Yolanda waved to me from her yard, wearing pretty dresses, happily humming Hungarian tunes as she tended her tomatoes and roses. Little-girl snoopiness got the better of me during one of our walks. “Grandpa,” I blurted, “how’d you get Mr. Smith to quit hitting Yolie?”

A rare flash of displeasure darkened his brown eyes, and as he stooped to look into my face, his normally-musical voice went flat and low. “You must never listen in on a private conversation again. It’s stealing.”

For anyone to think I’d steal, why, it would have cut like a razor. But for Grandpa to think it? Tears puddled in my eyes. “B-but Grandpa…I didn’t take anything that wasn’t m-mine!”

One powerful, calloused palm gently cupped my chin. “Ahh, cara mia....” The finger and thumb of his free hand formed the universal ‘okay’ sign. “Taking even this much of another person’s privacy is stealing a bit of their freedom.” Then he winked, and when his rugged smile returned, my heart swelled with relief. And to this day, when a nearby conversation tempts me to eavesdrop, I hum a silly song or whistle a tune, to drown out words I have no right to hear….

Abruptly, he changed the subject. “Nonna will have supper on the table soon,” he said, giving my hand a tender squeeze. “We’d better not be late, or there’ll be no pie and ice cream for us tonight!”

The crunch of pebbles beneath our shoes was momentarily drowned out by the cries of a small boy, enduring a spanking from his irate mother. “My papa gave me a beating when I was a boy,” Grandpa said. “Once.”

I’d never met his papa, but the very idea infuriated me. “He was mean, and I’m glad he’s dead!” I said in defense of the poor abused boy my Grandpa had been.

His hearty laughter surprised me. “Oh, believe me, cara mia, I earned it!”

Everyone in his small Italian village agreed: His father’s massive black bull was the most vicious they’d ever seen. Brawny men walked a wide berth around the monster that, in the tiny Adriatic farm town, was the stuff children’s nightmares are made of. “One day when I was about your age,” he said softly, “I wasn’t paying attention, and the beast gored me.” Lifting his left shirtsleeve, Grandpa exposed a rope-like scar, gnarled over a hollow of missing muscle. My fingertips clamped over my lips, but not soon enough to silence a horrified gasp.

“I was useless for months. Arm in a sling, weak from infection....” We walked several minutes in silence before he added, “I swore when I had my strength back, I’d show that bull who was boss….”

He described the hard work the animal had dutifully performed, grinding wheat and corn, pulling heavy wagons…. It was, Grandpa said, responsible for much of the Citerony family income. “When I killed it, well, let’s just say I never saw my father so furious….”

I walked in a daze, unable to wrap my mind around the notion that my sweet, gentle Grandpa had killed a living thing. “How’d you do it?” I whispered.

Using the first two fingers of his right hand, he touched the furrowed skin above wiry white eyebrows. “Pitchfork.”

Even at nine, I knew his rage must have been enormous, indeed, to penetrate the bull’s thick, hard skull. “Did you feel bad? After it was dead, I mean?”

Grandpa lifted his chin a notch and slowly nodded. And we never discussed the subject again.

Later that summer, I witnessed that same expression when a letter came, inviting him to City Hall to receive medals long past due, for heroism during “his war”. It described how Grandpa had slung a fellow soldier over his shoulder and carried him, unconscious and bleeding, nearly twenty miles through snow and ice in the wicked winter wind, despite frostbitten fingers and toes and a days-old hunger gnawing in his own gut. Grandpa calmly folded the pages and tucked them into his shirt pocket, dialed the mayor and calmly announced he would not attend the ceremony, could not accept the medals. I heard the man’s shocked reply: “But why?”

“Because,” Grandpa said matter-of-factly, “I wasn’t fast enough.” As he quietly replaced the heavy black receiver in its cradle, he blinked away a tear of regret.

That telephone connected Grandpa to hundreds of conversations with compadres during the half dozen story-filled years that passed, but I only remember one with heart wrenching clarity: Mom clamped a hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “He’s had a stroke, so be patient; it’ll be hard for him to talk.”

Trembling, I forced a merry, “Hiya, Grandpa!”

“I won’t be home for a while,” he stammered, “so visit your nonna when you can.” Then, “Do me a favor and wind my watch, so it won’t get rusty in all this humidity.” I was happy to agree, pleased he’d chosen me to care for his prized possession.

“Promise me something?”

“Anything,” I said, meaning it.

“Make me proud of the woman you’ll become. And always remember, you are my heart, cara mia.”

I pretended I didn’t understand that he was saying goodbye. Instead, I spent the next days, determinedly focused on homework and chores, accordion lessons and Jimmy Cicotti, my 'crush of the month'. Every day that week, I walked to Grandpa's, cradled his watch in the palm of my hand, did what I’d seen him do oh-so-many times, and carefully turned the knob forward, back, mesmerized by the quiet zzz-zzz-zzz of tiny gears meshing, acutely aware that my own heart was beating in sync with each tick and tock. After a quick glance to assure the correct time, I snapped it shut, and before slipping it into its protective pouch, I added my own item to Grandpa’s “Proper-Way-to-Wind-a-Watch” list, and pressed one small, heartfelt kiss to its closed case.

I loved the job. And I hated it…because I wanted Grandpa to come home, wind the damned thing himself!

The following Sunday after Mass, the hospital called:

Grandpa was gone.

I spent that first night with Nonna, hoping my presence would ease her endless crying. Yet hour after bleak hour, her sobs shook the mattress. A shard of moonlight, slanting through the Venetian blinds, illuminated tearstains that darkened her bright white pillowcase. Mercifully, at dawn, she slipped into exhausted, lonely slumber. Now—and only because I’ve experienced love like that—I understand her deep, all-consuming grief.

As the next days flurried by, the house grew overfull with friends and family, some carrying pies or casseroles, others bearing potted plants, all eager to share their special “Frank Story”. Weeks turned into months, yet I couldn’t bring myself to ask Nonna if I might hold the watch, for the request might have awakened her slow-healing heart wounds.

As for me, I didn’t dare cry at the loss of my beloved Grandpa, my best friend, my hero, for I believed if I allowed one tear to fall, it would be like Noah and the Ark all over again.

Predictably, like his dependable watch, life ticked on. I moved East, fell madly in love with a man ‘just like Grandpa’ (and married him), had children, ever mindful that I must be a woman he would have been proud to know.

Recently, on a sunny spring afternoon, the mailman handed me a brown-wrapped package. Surrounded by a cloud of discarded tissue paper, I clutched the velvet pouch to my chest and read the note written days before Nonna’s passing: “Your grandpa wanted you to have it.”

Of all the so-called treasures I own—diamonds and antiques, rare books and fine art—Grandpa’s watch is by far my most prized possession, despite its fifty dollar appraisal. In cherished memories of magical moments, it is truly priceless, for it reminds me he was ‘man’ to the bone, the type for whom turning his back on a friend would have been akin to stealing milk from orphans’ mouths. Loyal to a fault, he inspired such affection that, thirty years after his death, Nonna went to her grave, still his devoted widow.

Someday, they will greet me in heaven, but until then, when life is bleak and burdensome, I need only see that familiar shimmer of gold, hear the dependable tick-tick, and I am an innocent, happy girl again…

…walking with Grandpa.