E is for Early

Early. Not as in arriving early (though I’ve gone through phases where that was my m.o.) but early mornings. That is also no longer part of my routine, but once upon a time it was.

Anyhow, early mornings are something that I associate with my paternal grandfather, Pap. For most of my elementary school years, I spent every Friday night at Gammy & Pap’s house. Pap and I were always the first ones up and about, well before anyone else in the neighborhood. I didn’t spend much time with him during those mornings. He’d usually disappear to the yard or the garage and I’d plant myself in front of the television. What did I watch? I don’t really remember.

However, the early mornings I really remember with Pap were during the summers when we were on vacation. For several years we rented cabins/houses in Dewey Beach. Pap was up before sunrise each day, and usually I was up and about as well. This was prime beach walking time. We’d traipse the block or two to the beach, then walk along the water as the sun rose over the ocean. We’d walk from Dewey to Rehoboth and back again.

These were our treasure hunting times. Yes, we’d come across interesting shells and pieces of driftwood and we’d stop and dig for spider crabs. But our real finds were those items that others had left on the beach. Towels, shirts, toys, even cameras and jewelry. Some days we’d find several items, some days nothing, but we’d take it all back to the cabin and wash or launder what we had found.

One year I Donnie and I took friends with us to the beach. That year I didn’t take any early morning walks with Pap. I remember that he looked very sad.

Pap had some interesting quirks. He was very OCD and somewhat of a hoarder. I guess the hoarding part was a Depression-era carryover. He’d stock up on things that were on sale, he and Gammy. And they’d save things that could be re-used: plastic bags, ice cream buckets, just about anything.

His OCD showed up in his organizational skills. Each December he’d go out and buy birthday cards for the entire year and keep them in a special drawer in the kitchen, getting out a month’s worth at a time. We always knew which card was from Gammy & Pap because on the envelope, just above the stamp, was our birthdate, lettered in Pap’s neat printing. He also put the date on the canned goods that he and Gammy bought and kept a record of what he bought and on what date on the garage wall with a Magic Marker (this was before the days of Sharpies).

I think that the way I remember Pap most is walking around his yard, in shorts and no shirt, shoes with socks, digging or raking or pulling weeds.

Toward the end, he faded in and out of understanding what was going on. He had Alzheimer’s, so he stalled out at 1999, couldn’t remember any date after that. But he still read the newspaper every day and could sit and carry on a current events conversation.

I spent this afternoon looking through photos in a box that apparently came from Gammy and Pap’s house, a box of photos and a few clippings. I scanned about half of the photos. Some of them are interspersed in this entry, from birth to not long before his death.