Huntington the First

[Huh. If my father's father were still alive, he'd have turned one hundred years old today. He'd be the first of my four grandparents, all deceased, to reach that mark. Poppa died in late 1990, in Iowa City. I'd flown with my dad that summer to visit him there for what I guess we knew was probably the last time. He was staying with my aunt and uncle, and I spent most of that visit either helping my aunt lay down elaborate hosta beds in her backyard in impossible heat and humidity, or in her air-conditioned basement being slightly ill as a result. Poppa was his usual talkative self. The man never stopped with the stories.]

[Memories of my paternal grandfather (I make no warranty of factuality or completeness here; this were my impressions as a child, adolescent and young adult): born Hingham, Mass., to a man who had that odd late 19th century New England thing: strict religiosity combined with a quality I can only call visionary: minister, professor, author - Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau...the dead white men who still haunt us haunted him, and it wasn't easy on his four sons. My great-grandmother was an academic herself (biology, like my sister), but one heard mostly about him. Poppa rebelled, attended Deep Springs, then Cornell (T.A.ing for William Strunk), which he left under a cloud, the details of which seemed to change with every telling.]

[The rest reads prosaic, but you know every life that reads that way is actually like an iceberg: marriage (a schoolteacher from Connecticut of whom my sister and I have fond memories - Kate honored her by giving my niece the middle name Helen), too old for the army come WWII, two kids, work and life in Moline, Ill., locking horns (of course) with my dad, retirement in the early '70s: he and Granny sold their house and spent a decade and more visiting forty-nine states and all the Canadian provinces. They had one of the classic Airstreams, which they parked for weeks at a time in parents' front yard, giving my mother fits.]

[I remember a man enthusiastic for life, fond of a drink and of food, not terribly open to new ideas, and for whom empathy was just a word in the dictionary. I'm more and more aware than I was that Poppa, Dad and I share much more than an unusual first name. I know it sounds obnoxiously patriarchal, and also that it's much more complicated than father-son-grandson, but there's a reason that, when I draw my family tree, the Sharps occupy first position, upper left-hand side.]

[I've also come to realize that we all we have is this moment, and it's only the future that we can try, with frustratingly limited success, to shape. As happens with all sons, I like my dad more now than I ever have, and as I feel my way blindly trying to make some sense of my life, I want more and more to have a better relationship with him than I think he had with his father, and that Poppa had with his. Since I won't be having any sons, I want our line of menfolk to go out on a good note. (N.B.: If Kate and Mike have a boy next - yes, if Kate has anything to say about it, there will be another baby sooner rather than later - he is likely have Huntington as a middle name. And the beat goes on...)]

[Happy Birthday, Poppa.]

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