06.22.08

Aloud Sweater

Posted in Best of Blue Yon Belly, Sparkle at 6:49 pm by jeci

For My Grandpa, Whom I Love:

The Christmas of 1998, my grandpa gave me a sweater. He was rather pleased with himself about the sweater because he’d picked it out himself, which, for a widower of 80 shopping for his 22-year-old-granddaughter is, I’m sure, no small feat. The sweater was incredibly loud, a striped affair that crammed a great number of colours into its oscillating palette. This was what my grandpa was most proud of—all the colours. The girl at The Bay had been helping him find something, he explained, but everything she picked was so plain. And then he saw the striped sweater and, over the protests of the shop clerk, picked it because, as he told the confused girl, It would be perfect for Charlie. (My grandpa, by the way, always called me Charlie—it was just one of those inexplicable quirks of enduring affection.) As I pulled the sweater out of its box and contemplated it, my grandpa said with a laugh, Why wear just one colour when you can wear all of them at once?

(At this point it must be noted that one of my grandpa’s other inexplicable quirks was that he was a great lover of loud clothes. He had quite a splashy heyday in the 70s and was able to extend this heyday for several decades due to the resilience of polyester. My grandpa was nothing if not frugal and forthright in his preferences.)

Due mostly to the fact that it fit incredibly well (but also because I loved the idea that wearing all of the colours at once was perfect for me) the loud sweater my grandpa picked for me, against many odds, worked.

One month later, my grandpa was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. And four months later, I made a point of wearing the sweater one day when I went to visit my grandpa, even though it was a little too warm for a turtleneck at that point in the season. That same day, after a small group of my family clustered around my grandpa, eating fried chicken and pie in his living room and listening to his latest shenanigans*, after I returned to my apartment and my studying, two hot, fat tears fell onto my text books and smeared the words. I knew. It was the last time. That’s the other thing I remember about that sweater.

Out of intense sentimentality, I kept the sweater for the last ten years. I moved it to Vancouver, Montréal, back to Edmonton, and back to Vancouver again. Each year, it got buried a little deeper in my closet, but every time I stuffed a bag full of clothes for the GoodWill, I hesitated at that sweater. I was worried that I would forget that my grandpa wanted me to wear all the colours at once. That he called me Charlie, even when speaking about me to faceless shop clerks.

I worked up the nerve to give away the sweater today. I suppose if I had been thinking, I would have just taken a picture of me wearing the sweater so that I could remember what it meant, but when I reached for it in the back of the closet, the moment seemed to call for the same approach that one uses when swallowing a nasty-tasting cough syrup: close your eyes and get it over with as quickly as possible before you lose your nerve.

These are the words instead: It was never the particular jumble of colours on the sweater, just that my grandpa once picked out a sweater for me all by himself and he picked one that he loved because he loved me.

I know now that my grandpa was onto something. Be loud. Be yourself. If you have an opinion, say it. Wear it. Do it with your head held high and no one will question that you’re entitled to it. Like eggs? Eat your eggs with defiant gusto even when the rest of the nation becomes squeamish about cholesterol. Love your grand-kid? Call her Charlie. She’ll know what it means. Bellow encouragement at her little league games and heckle the ump over calls you don’t like as though the World Series is on the line. Why not? She’ll never forget. Besides, the only things more important than baseball are family and hockey. Amen.

Love,

Charlie

——————————————–

*In his final weeks, my grandpa, a stastistician by profession, had crafted a passionate petition that relied heavily on statistics and careful wording to garner support for the ban of dihydrogen monoxide on the basis that it is one of the key components of acid rain. My grandpa took great pleasure in the fact that his oncologist was convinced to sign the petition. If you’re right now mulling over the potential threat of dihyrogen monoxide to the environment and your health and you sense someone gloating, I can assure you that’s my grandpa from the beyond, taking delight once again in his own peculiar brand of playful cheekiness and beligerance.

Permalink