Thursday, January 14, 2021
Grandad
By Heather Marie Annis (Granddaughter to Gorman, Daughter of Ramona Green)
Despite being provinces apart, people can have a profound impact on you. Even though we couldn’t see him often. when we were kids we heard all kinds of stories of Grandads heroism. I wanted to be just like him.
We heard he had the “Teeth of a horse” - My mom’s way of saying he had no cavities. I don’t know how long this was true for, but until I was a teenager I had great anxiety at the dentist office until the moment they told me I had no cavities. Only then could I breath a sigh of relief knowing that I had perfect teeth - just like Grandad.
Hearing about the fresh tree bows that he would hang around the house every Christmas eve always made our fully decked out house seem underdressed. It did inspire me to start making wreaths out of clippings from trees when I got older so I could make the house smell good on Christmas - Just like Grandad.
We would hear about the love between him and Grandmother, and how even later in marriage they were like teenagers in love. We witnessed their relationship when we visited. It became my benchmark for what love should be: someone you can laugh and play with even when times were tough.
My childhood version of this hero was someone who had great interior decorating skills, played a lot, and had horse teeth. You can see where my priorities were as a child.
Visiting him as an adult, I saw his heroism first hand. He was on the roof fixing his chimney, out collecting logs, checking his traps. He sang with me, he told me stories of survival, of hunting moose from the bridge, of going out hunting and getting lost because he was snow-blind.
His jovial and teasing spirit was always trying to toughen you up and also get a laugh out of you.
Of course no hero is perfect. He was more than willing to teach me how I was peeling a carrot wrong, but when I asked him to teach me how to make a snowshoe he said “You can learn how I learned. You can take my snowshoe and study it and you’ll figure out”. He was a “hard case”, as he would say. But I’d still like to learn how to make those snowshoes, and trek through the snow with them - just like Grandad.
I’ll remember him in so many ways. Every time I hold and axe, every time I sit by a fire or go hiking in the woods, every time I sing Amazing Grace, every time I make rhubarb jam - Just like Grandad.
