GREAT-GRANDPARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, MOTHERS AND FATHERS

INSIDE THE TICKING MOMENTS OF A PANDEMIC – III – EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 12, 2020, COLUMBUS, OHIO, USA, LINDA LEE GREENE, AUTHOR & ARTIST

GREAT-GRANDPARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, MOTHERS AND FATHERS

Of my early childhood, I recall quite a lot, both great and small—little things such as the floral pattern of my grandmother’s apron; the chewing-tobacco aroma of my grandfather’s breath; the giggle of my Uncle “Neenie.” I remember big things, as well, such as the gnarled old man, his cavernous eyes shadowed beneath a snow-white pair of shaggy, brush-like eyebrows, whom from time to time nodded off on the davenport in the front room of my grandparent’s farmhouse. Landon Howard Caplinger was his name, and he was the father of my grandmother, a worn-out farmer and grieving widower. Great-grandmother, Sally, his wife of over fifty years, had died when my mother was in the early days of her pregnancy with me, and by all evidence, he mourned her passing until his own death nine years later at the age of eighty-nine. It was also one day before my ninth birthday.  

My great-grandfather, Landon, was the first old person I ever knew, and I recollect that I was always on guard around him while he was alive—on guard so as not to disturb his sleep, but also because I think I somehow feared I would catch what he had—that I would also grow suddenly old if I failed to keep a very long and very safe distance between him and me. Shielded behind the frame of the doorway between the kitchen and front room, at every chance, I peeked around the edge of it and studied the strange old man, scanning him from head to toe, rooting out his secrets—secrets, I suppose, of what it was like to be such an ancient being.

Religion weaves through the history of my family, but by the time of my childhood, church attendance was a luxury they could no longer afford. Sundays on the farm were like all other days. The cows still needed morning milking, the pigs slopped, the chickens fed, and meals prepared for the many of us. Animals didn’t take out time to worship God, nor did the members of my family whom were their busy caretakers. Even so, there was a kind of reverence in the air of those Sundays, a softly-spoken devotion among my grandparents, my parents, and my aunts and uncles. I hail from a family of talkers, chatterboxes whose verbal excesses required of me to take cover beneath tables and behind chairs and to listen, to observe, and to examine their words for myself. No doubt my soul was rehearsing me even then for my role as the chronicler of their story.  

It was there in those times of overhearing that I learned about another sad man, a man by the name of Jesus. While all around my great-grandfather the house bustled with that activity and chatter, out of the corner of my eye, I watched him half-prone on the davenport, silent and sad. That old man added a kind of curious weight to my childhood. I seemed to understand that he was the linchpin of my family, indeed of my very existence, while at the same time he seemed to me to be of another world. I think that deep down I had a feeling that Landon and Jesus were one and the same.©

Image: Landon on the davenport between my grandfather and grandmother, Adams County, Ohio, circa early-1950s.     

Multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene’s books are available for purchase at Amazon.com.