…A man I never really knew. His name was Glen Howard, I can’t tell you when he was born and I can’t tell you if it was 1, 2, or 3 years since he passed away. All I knew about him I was told to me by my own father, whose moods were often fickle; reminiscing about grandpa was apt to put him in a black mood. Or I gleaned it from observation and the uncomfortable conversations he had with my father when we visited on holidays. Grandpa was born and raised in the Gila Valley in Arizona it is also where he died. He never forgave the Japanese. He was in the Navy. He married my grandma. He fathered 5 children, 2 boys and 3 girls. He cheated on my grandma and married the other women. He owned a bar. He threw silver dollars off of the ship he was serving on in WWII, thinking he’d never see home again. He drove truck. He had eagles tattooed on his forearms. He collected ceramic figurines full of liquor. He was larger then life. He had diabetes. He had goats. He had 3 mongrel dogs. He hurt my father deeply. He died of cancer. He thought he’d die in the Pacific fighting the “Japs”.
This is all I know of a man whose blood runs in my veins. This is all I know the man whose life I dreamed of chronicling. But I could never find the courage to speak up or the words to say. I sat there unhinged and desperate to escape during holidays. Not wanting to feel the tension and anger, the resentment, and love, the hero worship and scapegoating all fermenting in that tiny old trailer. I was only a child begging for his father and grandfather to be the adults I wanted them to be. So that the air could clear and we could all finally breath. They never should have done that to me. We all ended up losers. My dad lost his father, my grandfather lost his son. I’m crying now thinking that they never got to know each other, perpetual strangers to each other constantly dancing through a lifetime of introductions. I don’t want this to happen to me and my dad. I want to know the man who has most influenced my life. I want to understand who he is.
I don’t want to do what he did with his father.
