Advice, part 6: Visit

Before we delve into the deep and murky recesses of my brain and the advice the spews forth from such a messed up place, allow me to throw in a follow up comment from Calencoriel regarding last week's monologue about dealing:

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
- Robertson Davies

That's about right. Be happy and, amazingly, you'll end up being happy.

Now, ever onward, upward, and inward...or rather northward, southward, and up.

Visit

I miss my grandfather, the one on my father's side.

He was a very simple country man, a man who never made it into rather than through high school. He wasn't politically correct in any fashion of the word - calling buckeyes by a very different nickname and kept one in his pocket most of the time. He created some of the most beautiful wood worked pieces that I've seen - gorgeous halltrees, wonderful baby cribs, plant stands, and lots more - some of which I have in my house now. And by the end of his life, he couldn't recognize us and spent his last years in a nursing home, dying of Parkinson's disease.

And I don't know nearly enough about him. I don't know all of the jobs that he did growing up. I don't know how he met my grandmother or how he felt when he bought the bigger, more expensive house next door and moved his family one house over on Ekin Avenue in my hometown. I don't know how he left the farm and headed inot the city or what his wedding was like, and I don't have nearly enough things around me that make me think of him.

Most importantly, what I didn't know is that I would care about these things when I grew up.

Take some time. Visit with the old folks who seem so crabby and dated to you. If you've got the opportunity and time, come up with a half dozen questions and record the answers.

The old folks will thank you for taking time to visit with them; it'll make those boring holidays a little more tolerable because the old folks won't be hassling you nearly so much; and somebody will thank you in a number of years from now.

Soemtimes it's tough to have enough foresight to think about what you'll want later in your life but that you'll have to get now, but I promise you that many of you will regret later the time that you haven't spent now.