my grandfather only liked to ski groomed runs, sought out the corduroy. he wore bogner suits and expensive old man goggles and loved lunchtime at deer valley. steaks and burgers and that great chili.
"bapa gave me diet pepsi," i would always say in the car on the way home when my parents wouldn't allow me to have soda or caffeine. he also never minded when i ate too much candy.
we would sit on the couch on the soft upholstery (before too many other grandkids were around and nana put plastic over them) and read. bapa called him bill, and read stories about lady macbeth and poor prince hamlet and queen mab. he told tales of da vinci's inventions and michelangelo and the poem that has the room where the women come and go.
i waterskied behind a wave runner when he was trying to teach me how, and once he got us through one of the biggest storms and highest waves i've ever seen. i was hiding under the hatch and he kept laughing and it made me feel safer.
his favorite exclamation was "holy mackerel" and i didn't get it for the longest time.
he liked me best. he always told me so. i could just tell, too.
i remember sitting on the floor of his old room that week, when my mother and grandmother were out, and i pulled my knees to my 9-year-old chest and kept thinking there was some type of mistake. or if i had been there it would feel different.
if he were here now would it be different?
today i keep an old photo on my bulletin board of him holding me when i was small.
graveyards scare me, and i don't think he liked them either.
those first and last runs were for you.
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