most people who knew my grandfather for some time
understood quite clearly what a strong woman my grandmother was

for putting up with his shit for so long

while he fell into alcoholism early on
she raised three children
kept the family together
worked a variety assembly jobs
and managed to eventually get my grandfather off of his violent obsession with fire water

she also painted
played organ
and enjoyed many crafts for fun and eventual profit

he was always chasing danger

his father had been an inventor of sorts and had worked on heating in vehicles
so he was very young when he became obsessed with motors and motorcycles
and began racing in off-road competitions across the country
as he moved from job to job

laying dynamite for mining companies

highrise construction

they both smoked with urgency

^..^ ^..^

they always wanted to understand things
and were both very heavy readers

when i was young
i would walk among their bookshelves
which filled one of the spare rooms of the house they had finally settled in

books on electricity and history and currency and cars

when i was in sixth grade
grandfather asked me what i was going to be studying the following year

although i had many classes coming up
i was very excited about one in particular
and could only mention the things i wanted to learn in my first year algebra

he laughed and went into the closet
pulling out "essentials of algebra: first course"
by a walter w hart
published 1941

he said, "you don't have to wait, you know"
and gave me the book

i took it home and read of polynomials
equations
all these pretty games with symbols that i studied
but the greatest epiphany was that i didn't have to wait

i could learn about something whenever i wanted as long as i found a book about it

^..^ ^..^

i also learned that studying math was best
with a bunch of blank sheets of paper and a pen nearby

although the book was fun
it was also very basic and much of the first part
was stuff i had already pieced together from earlier school discussions
and so i would make "harder problems" as soon as i knew enough to ask them

there was a section towards the end called "square root without a table"

it had the following diagram and description of steps

step 1 step 2 step 3 step 4 step 5
8 8 8 8 7 8 7
------ ------ ------ ------ ------
|75 69 |75 69 |75 69 |75 69 |75 69
|64 |64 |64 |64 |64
------ ------ ------ ------ ------
|11 69 160|11 69 xxx|11 69 xxx|11 69
167 167|11 69
------

although the book did not detail the theory
it was not long until i had generalised this to cube roots and other radicals

i didn't have to wait, you know

^..^ ^..^

we used to make ice cream
with one of those old manual ice cream makers

the outside was a wooden barrel which had metal attachments
in which would rest an inner metal chamber with the a stirring spoon

all the grandchildren would gather round
and grandmother would mix the cream
and tell us if we wanted it cold we'd have to mix it

so we'd take the inner cup outside
pour a bunch of ice and epsom salts around it in the barrel
and take turns cranking the thing around until it burst from the top as ice cream

i would go first and let the boys finish it off
while i would go back inside to help grandmother clean up

she was always cleaning up

^..^ ^..^

one night when i was very young
after spending a long time at a party with my mom and friends of my grandparents
just across the street from my grandparents' house
we walked home
my grandather clearly inebriated

he sat on the front porch step
as me and my grandmother nursed his obvious nausea

he looked at me and said
"go tell your mom she's a whore"

"what?" i asked
looking to my grandmother to save me

"i said go tell your mom she's a whore"

grandmother shooed me inside
where i saw my mother on the recliner
also quite drunk

she looked at me

"grandpa says you're a whore" i told her

"i know" she said

^..^ ^..^

they always used to love travel
but as i got older they found a new urgency to see the world

months driving across new zealand
cruise ships to the arctic

i saw them less
my mom had remarried and i had new hells to face
and so i missed them even more

but they sent postcards
and always appeared so happy when i saw them

grandfather was not drinking any more
but they both still smoked with urgency

they always had somewhere they were off to

they couldn't wait much longer

^..^ ^..^

the model a's and indian motocycles
started getting dusty in their garage
and the pictures of grandfather with steve mcqueen
all lined up in some desert race somewhere
were beginning to fade with smoke stains

when we did speak
they were more philosophical talks

they would speak of how our cherokee ancestry helped them understand
there really are no gods
because they had turned to many gods in their years
and none of them answered as loudly as their own wills

any gods that might be
they said
were really quite weak and insignificant

^..^ ^..^

they began to get too weak to travel much

with less ability to mobility
grandfather starting returning to other obsessions

obsessions with measuring devices

barometers and thermometers

he would write down data from various locations around their house
onto tiny little sheets of scratch paper
in tiny little print
rows of dates and times and readings from his instruments

grandmother would focus on preparing 3 meals a day
and painting sweaters with cards and dice
and things other elderly women would want to buy while visiting vegas

then one morning
just a few years ago
grandfather woke up one morning with the left side of his face sagging
and unable to lift his left hand

my mom drove him quickly to the hospital
where the obvious was confirmed
he had had a stroke

he tried therapy
but he could never really regain much use of his left side

he could walk
but only very slowly and by holding on to things
bracing if he could not control his leg well enough

he could no longer work on his bikes or model a's
and he was visibly frustrated with his difficult speech

grandmother smoked even harder in her grasps at coping
soon developing copd and congestive heart failure

her bones became brittle and she started shrinking quite noticeably

she started having to go in regularly for some strange back problems

my mom
who was taking care of them full time at this point
confided to me that grandfather was losing his mental capacities
and had been walking around naked at times

it turned out that the back problems grandmother was experiencing
were because grandfather
despite or because of his condition
was sexually active again and this was actually breaking grandmother's bones

mom had to have him committed to a nursing home
because he would have killed grandmother if she let it continue

but now he had nothing

he did not have his motorcycles
and he did not have the woman who
when he had first seen her at a party back when they were in high school
he had told his best friend "that is the girl i'm gonna marry"

he had nothing to wait for
so he gave up

he stopped eating

^..^ ^..^

a few nights ago
still pretty early in the evening
grandfather died

11 hours later
early the next morning
before she woke
before my mom was able to tell her of grandfather
grandmother also died

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galathaea: prankster, fablist, magician, liar