Thanks Grandpa ...

Maybe my Grandpa Roy is a much stronger presence in my everyday life now due to the discoveries made on Ancestry.com.

Maybe it's because I feel like I understand him better now that I'm getting older and have raised a couple of kids in a hard to hoe row and have a more seasoned perspective on life.

Maybe it's the luxury of time now that I'm longer a working mother burning her candle at both ends and can take time to reflect more on who I am and how I came to be the person I am.

Whatever it is, I find my Grandpa in more thoughts much more often these days.

This is why a few weeks ago I found myself relating a random story about Grandpa to a close friend about how Grandpa loved math and science so much that he bought books and made it a point to educate himself on those subjects. I told her how we lived with my Grandparents the year I was 3 and how my Grandpa took me under his wing right away and started teaching me math and science concepts even at that tender age. At night after dinner he and I would go out to the dark front lawn and do what he referred to as "study the stars". He pointed out the constellations to me, teaching me their names, their stories and even the names of the individual stars within the constellations. He did that until I could do it myself. It's because of Grandpa that 50 years later I can look up into the night sky during any season and name the constellations and the stars. And everytime I do, I think of him. Thanks Grandpa.

Relating that story brought back a memory of the "President Plate". The year I was 4 a local jewelry store offered a free John F. Kennedy Presidential Plate with every purchase. As chance would have it my Grandparents happened to buy something at that store and brought home one of those plate. My Grandpa treated it reverently as he showed it to me. A picture of JFK was in the center and it was surrounded by smaller pictures of all the presidents who came before him. Grandpa told me that if I memorized all the presidents in order of their administration that he would give me that plate. Neat! A week later that plate was mine. I can still rattle off the presidents all the way to Obama as easily as most people recite the alphabet. That little bit of knowledge helped make college history easier and has helped me dominate in Trivial Pursuit more than once, lol. I kept that plate for many years but somewhere along the path of my adult life I let it go. I've always regretted that and so a few weeks ago I went looking for one on Ebay ... and found it for $2.00! It finally arrived last night. When I opened the box and looked inside I was instantly flooded with childhood memories and emotions. As I hugged that plate to my chest I swear I could feel my Grandpa's presence ... and it was good.

My first grandchild is arriving in March. She's a girl named Alice and of course I'm over the moon excited to meet her. I'm even more excited to tell her about her Great Grandpa and pass the torch onto her.

Thanks for everything Grandpa.


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