Truths my grandfather told me

For the past 25 years, my grandfather has been following me around, whispering in my ear. Not literally, of course, because that would be weird. But he’s the British-accented adviser in my head, giving me a nod of approval when I need it, and raising an eyebrow when he begs to differ with something I’m doing.

Of late, for instance, he has been smirking at me and the activity tracker I have clipped to my pocket (a few days ago, I swear to you, it said “HUG ME KATHRYN.” What?)

I am sure that my grandfather routinely walked what is now the recommended 10,000 steps every day and not because he had a $100 gadget urging him to do so. Instead of “exercising,” he dug and hoed and roamed the pathways of his garden, growing vegetables that kept our family of four in potatoes through many winters and roses that were the joy of many summers.

He was good to the environment in the way that people used to be before they had to be told it was the right thing to do; he never owned a car or learned to drive, so he walked everywhere he could and took a bus the rest of the time. (He also never jogged; “The day I see a jogger smiling,” he used to say, “is the day I’ll start.”)

My grandmother, who died more than a decade before her husband, used to sew clothes and everything else on an old Singer, not because doing so was a sustainable, on-trend thing to do but because it made life more affordable. At the cottage, still, we have a chair with arm protectors that bear her telltale seams.

And then there’s the tea. Have you seen the price of it lately? I bought a small container of some a while back because it smelled pretty, and it cost me $20. I could have bought a teapot for that or four magazines or three pairs of socks. My grandparents, on the other hand, were content to sip cup after cup of Red Rose, made in a pot they rarely washed (builds flavour). They’d never heard the word chai. There was no licorice or ginger involved, or dew siphoned off tiny flowers by elves.

I doubt if either one of them ever dieted. They went to church most Sundays, and my grandfather joined every committee in town, ran many of them, voted Liberal every chance he got, and ended up, when my brother and I were teenagers, becoming the town’s citizen of the year.

They lived what seems to me now to be useful, fulfilling lives, with hardships to be got over and small pleasures to be had.

As a young teenager, after my grandmother died, I used to go and hang out with my grandfather on the weekends or in the summer. We walked around, chatted to the neighbours, went to the grocery store. Occasionally, I would bake him a little cake. At the end of the day, he’d turn out my light, and say “That was a good day. I enjoyed every minute of it.”

I never doubted for a moment that he meant it.

In the morning, I’d wake up to his whistling in the kitchen downstairs (usually it was “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” but he also liked opera). At the time, it irritated me — I am not a morning person — but now I’d give anything to hear that whistle one more time.

My grandparents both moved on from this life before either of my children or any of their cousins showed up. And even though neither of my kids resemble them, that I can see, the younger one occasionally gets a twinkle in his eye before telling a joke, the same way that his great-grandfather did.

Times have changed since a slim young man came to Canada in the 1920s, looking for a better life and waiting a year before bringing his shy bride-to-be to join him. But his wise and optimistic views on things continues to inform my life 114 years after his birth and 25 years after his death.

If it’s raining, run between the drops ... You save 100 per cent on something if you don’t buy it at all ... If you waited for the weather to clear up in Canada, you’d never do anything ... When you work somewhere, learn as much as you can so that you never tell anyone “That’s not my department.”

One saying that has stuck true with my parents and my brother and now with our own families all these years is this one: It could be pouring outside, and my grandfather would look out the window and say, in his eternally optimistic way, “It’s clearing in the east.”

For me, there’s another expression that has got me through a hard day here and there. Waiting to cross the street, we would stand and watch the ebb and flow of the traffic. “Just wait for a break,” he’d say. “There’s always a break.”