Sunday 19 January 1986

Went to see my Grandpere. He said this spring he???d teach me his tradition.¹

_____________
1. I sat in the same chair, at the same desk at my grandmother’s house this past summer. The kitchen table is still to the left, the books on the shelves above the desk the same ones that were there then. In so many ways my grandmother’s house is untouched by change and style, so that this memory intermeshes with so many others. I would sit at that desk (as I did last summer) and write, or read, or draw. I was sitting there twenty years ago today, and heard my grandfather say that he would teach me his tradition in the spring. He was going to teach me how to make a flute or something. He said he’d have to do it before he goes, or something to that effect, and he said this sitting at the kitchen table, speaking mostly to my grandmother, who was standing next to him. The scene: he was was sitting in his chair, to the right. She was standing to the left. She’s wearing a flower print shirt. After he said this, about doing it before he goes, she slaps him playfully, communicating, don’t say such things. We’re supposed to pretend to be immortal until we breath our last.

In the car, on the way home, I began to worry that he might die before he could show me this thing. His joke became my concern. I didn’t tell anyone, kept it to myself. Thought I was being silly. I’ve always had a streak of paranoia, and even then a part of me knew that I was letting my thoughts get away with themselves. I used to think the creaks of the house settling, especially coming from the ceiling, were the bullies at school who hated me so much they snuck into the house to crawl around the attic and drop down through the ceiling, on top of my bed, to plunge pocket knives into my heart. My imagination was not always friendly and fun, but a source of nightmares and anxiety. That’s how I remember the mid-80s. Fears of being murdered. And fears that perhaps I was psychic and my grandfather would die before spring.