Today I am wearing my grandfather’s dark blue button down cardigan. I took this sweater from his bedroom after he died in 1981. How I smuggled it back home, I do not remember. But it has been mine ever since. In high school I wore it ironically—with cut off jean shorts, black stockings and monkey boots. But in my 20’s and ever since, it has become some what of a comfort sweater. I wear it when I am sick or sad or lonely.
Today I am none of those things. I am actually quite happy. I saw the sweater in my closet and even with it’s frayed sleeves and a whole in the armpit that needs mending, it made me so inexplicably happy I had to wear it. Hole and all.
My grandfather died when I was nearly seven but in those few years I had with him, he helped mold me into who I am. He prepared me for the road ahead. Aristotle said, “Give me the boy of seven and I give you the man,” meaning those first seven years of life are formative and often, the person you will become, is evident even at this young age.
I was not his blood. My grandfather was my mother’s step father but he adored me and everyone knew it. I certainly did. He treated me tenderly, lovingly, and I would later learn, he was not that way with everyone. He also taught me to be tough. To see the world for what it really was. To not let anyone knock me down.
With so much time passed, I cannot tell you specifically how he did this. I just know he did.
Perhaps I simply wanted him near today. His cotton sweater wrapped around me makes him present. I know he would be proud of me and that he would like me. That he would be delighted in who I have become. And that he would adore my husband and my sons, one of which is marked with his name.
(My Grandpa and a marlin. I can’t even image how a person catches one of these)
Shemaiah,
Your sweater meditation put me in mind of this. Grace in small moments. Thanks for sharing yours.
Chris
Bible Study with Farm Girl
8/16//2022
I chanced upon a treasure in a book.
God speaks, we learn, in Scripture, and I lucked
Upon a four-leaf clover as I looked
For lines in Mother’s Bible. She had tucked
It near the end of Matthew Six, embraced
Between age yellowed pages, yet still green
Despite four decades passed. Her farm girl grace
Was looking for God’s signs, sometimes unseen,
Vermillion stripes along a cliff, the red
On blackbirds wings. Consider, said our Lord,
The lilies of the field – and so she did.
In clover is my memory restored:
I study with the eyes she passed along,
And seek out what will last when I am gone.