This piece was written as a timed writing exercise during a writer’s retreat I enjoyed in Jan. 2010 at Mountain Thyme Bed and Breakfast.  It is totally fictional.  The writing prompt was “My Grandfather was a man who…” (BTW, this is unedited, so please be charmed instead of critical of the rough spots.)

My Grandfather Was…

My grandfather was a man who instilled lasting memories.  Memories that lasted beyond his lifetime, beyone his world, beyond all reason.   Having only met him in the memories of my mother, I gave him mythical proportions; all the swagger of John Wayne, the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson and the righteousness of Damocles.

I, his lowly descendent, could never live up to his reputation from the grave.  And neither could my father, or stepfathers no.s 1, 2 and 3.  Finally, my mother stoppped marrying them, stopped expecting them to be her Atlas in this world gone wrong.  Shrugging was too painful for both of us.

After all these years, as I date and discard, I cannot banish the ghost of the grandfather I never knew in the flesh.  These memores are cast in the hardest concrete I’ve ever seen.

Still, I look for a chisel.