Another treasured find from summer travels back to my paternal family’s homeland – an actual journal entry made BY MY GRANDFATHER! Remember back when I gave him a journal to spill his stories into? Only to find it years later completely blank? Little did I know he had already exhausted himself way back in 1986 in two delicious pages.

Quite a writer herself, Great Aunt Connie composed a wonderfully inciting plea on the inside cover. 

Two years later, Grandpa began writing.

New details of his youth were not revealed here, but his familiar scratch was a blast of warm nostalgia and gratitude. The language and phrasing he uses create such a clear voice in my mind.

“The house where I was born – a two room house with a bare attic, the walls were papered with pages from magazines – especially the Saturday Evening Post – vestiges of which still remain after 60 odd years.”

“The memories of life there are wonderful. The house was in a small canyon with vertical rock walls nearby, which provided a wealth of climbing and exploration for a boy my age. Since my brothers were at least 4 years younger or older then I, a great deal of my time was spent playing alone. This perhaps accounts for my tendency to be less than outgoing.”

Having heard (and listened to!) grandfather’s stories throughout my life, it occurs to me now that there is part of his narrative that we share – solitude.

His was mostly unwanted, but it conditioned him to learn. He filled it with curiosity and adventure. His memory was strong and rich with detail, possibly from having the space and time to let experiences soak deeply into his subconscious. He admitted once that he didn’t prefer that life of isolation. It drove him to get out of the vast openness and onto college, the Navy, and finally engineering. He found a partner who perfectly matched his need for company and they created a marriage spanning 70 years, ending isolation in both their lives.

I crave solitude like water but get it far less than my appetite demands. The opportunity for long periods of solitude – isolation – aloneness – is difficult to come by when raising a child, but there are pools of rejuvenating seclusion if I can defer judgement of them for being too small.

My childhood imagination game was to think of what it would be like to fix up some little abandoned house tucked in the mountains somewhere and live there alone. Later, when I would drive across country for one reason or another (or none at all…) I would day dream about residing in a town population 123, or renovating one of the little Texas town squares and starting all over. Dove Creek, Colorado has made it into those fantasies many times. Moving there by myself and living in the town my Grandfather spent another chapter of his life in, and where I still have family. Surely those day dreams were fed by the stories I grew up with.

Who am I kidding. I live in the country now and find the isolation a bit much at times. I don’t need a life of solitude, but rather a practice of solitude. The same kind of practice my Grandfather used to build a life around numbers and deep thinking.

I reluctantly accept that for all my Grandfather was, he was not a writer. I’m fairly certain I won’t find my father’s longhand descriptions of his life experiences either. As much as I admire and aspire to be more like them in many ways, I gladly stand apart from them in this one. Thank you Grandpa – for your life of overcoming, moving through, working hard, playing plenty, shouldering your own responsibilities, and not complaining.