CHAPTER 9

A PICTURE OF UNKNOWN PEOPLE

Darby and I remember the distinctive black and white photograph of Grandpa Jack and Grandma Mimi that hung in the hallway of our house. While neither of us paid much attention to it when they lived there, we remembered the mystery of wanting to know the two people in it. After all, we barely knew the people in the picture, and it hung in our house. Yet, it seemed completely unrelated to our lives.

The picture was of them in front of a big brick building. They were both much younger and neither wore a smile for the photograph. Grandma’s hair was in a bun and she wore the smallest glasses imaginable. Darby remembered Grandma’s skirt was very straight, and she wore a sweater over it. Grandpa Jack wore a mismatched suit jacket and pants with a white shirt and bow tie. His hair was slicked back, and he too wore glasses. Both were holding a stack of paperwork or something to that effect. The photo did not seem to have been taken on any significant day. I wondered why this photo would be the one Dad would select to frame and have mounted on the wall. I'd find out later it was one of the only photographs he had of his parents.

Dad never seemed all that interested in talking about his parents. So, before this trip to the farm, I had no feelings for them at all. I'd read about how good grandparents could be in various books like Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Alm-Uncle in Heidi. Yet, those glorious relationships always felt like fantasy in the books. Louise and Lewis were not the grandparents of books. They smelled funny with occasional bad breath and dare I write both had the occasional bouts of horrible gas that deemed them more human than infamous. 

Grandpa Jack and Grandma Mimi were somewhat different. At least from what I knew from that one picture. I could fantasize how they'd be. Maybe they'd be like the fictionalized versions of what they should be. Of course, Gramma Louise and Aunt Jane would pepper their reality with a darker light about them. It is impossible to make a validating opinion of someone simply based on one photo and the opinion of questionable others.

Making matters worse, I can recall the few times I asked Dad about his parents and there was always hesitation. I'd hear our parents mention something about them, perhaps an update on their travels, but I can't recall specifically what. The truth was Dad was short on answers. It was clear he didn't know them or didn't want to talk about them or both.

When asked about them, he’d always say something like, “Well, what do you want to know?” He always answered the question with another question.

I asked once, “What are they like?”

“Well, they are both professors…teachers at a university.”

“What do they teach?”

“Grandpa Jack teaches anthropology and Grandma Mimi teaches history and sociology.” At the time, I didn't understand what that meant. But I wasn't willing to admit it. Being labeled “gifted” often makes it hard to ask questions because you feel you can't disappoint anyone. A question could make you look dumb or even less than gifted, which was the worst part of living up to the label. At least, that's how a kid thinks. Now I see asking questions is good. They lead to better understanding and that is what truly makes someone gifted.

I once asked, “What was it like growing up with Grandpa Jack?”

After a short pause, Dad said, “Your grandpa was a busy man with important things to do. Your grandparents had their jobs, which involved a lot of time doing research, and that research included many travels. They were both very highly regarded and highly educated professors. So, I spent a lot of time with Aunt May, you remember her.”

            We had gone with our parents to see our dad’s Aunt May right before she died. We also had gone to the funeral with our dad. Both Grandma Mimi and Grandpa Jack were also at May’s funeral. My memory of that funeral is only complicated by the fact that they didn't come to the funeral for our parents. Before our parents died, I found it hard to understand what having parents never around would be like. Our dad had a job, yet he still spent plenty of time with us. 

What we didn’t know was when our father reached seventeen, he had moved out of his parents’ house. He wanted to see what was out in the world that was so interesting to keep his father away so often. He finished high school and immediately went to college. At school, he met our mom, and they were married only six months after their first meeting in their senior year in college. Soon after they both graduated, him with a degree in music and her with a degree in education, they got pregnant. They lived in the Los Angeles area where they could be close to my mom's parents, Louise and Lewis. Dad eventually found a job as a music teacher at a high school. That eventually resulted in him also teaching math classes as well. It was funny for Darby and me to learn that music and math had so much in common. It was the perfect job he’d tell us, because it allowed him to spend more time with Mom and us. This was something he wanted – to spend as much time as possible with his kids.

When we were born, Grandpa Jack and Grandma Mimi did not immediately come to visit. Grandpa Jack had been off on a research project. Eventually, they did come to see their son and grandchildren for the first time. My only memory of that is the pictures I have seen with them and us as babies. After that, it was mostly the exchange of gifts, cards, and photos through the mail was all there would be between us.

Later that night on the farm, while in bed and before we fell asleep, Darby and I talked about the story Grandpa Jack had introduced.

            I started in, “What do you think of the story Grandpa is telling? That history?”

            “History? That is not history, Darius. It's a story like any other, just made up.”

            “What about the references he quoted,” I asked. "Are those just stories?”

            Darby answered, “I think they are just stories, Darius. They're not true. It is hard to believe that stories of giants and angels and all those other stories in the bible could be true. They're just stories like any other story. Like the books you read, they are stories someone made up to tell. Nothing more.”

            “Darby, I have a feeling Grandpa isn’t making it up.”

            “Well, I am sure! Always with your head in a cloud.” It was dark but I could imagine her rolling her eyes at me. She always rolled her eyes at me. This was especially common after the year we had just had.

The last year taught Darby to be realistic about everything in life. Dreaming of what was or what she hoped it could be was worthless. She'd say, “It isn’t going to bring our parents back.” The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. 

If the stories Grandpa Jack was telling were true and what was in the bible was true, then God did exist. If he existed why then were our parents taken away from us? She'd reason. Why had she been put in this place in her life? She would have preferred that life had stayed the way it was. I couldn't agree more about wanting life to be the way it was. What I did know from all my reading, real or not real, was there were challenges in life. Things one had to overcome to survive. Survival wasn't just breathing and being alive. Survival was overcoming things that were larger than us. Things like Nazis, war, destruction, dragons and orcs. Real or made-up, these things represented things that happen in life that would not be easy. Your true survival depends on your overcoming the obstacles you face in life, whether a bad grade, a bully, a divorce, or the death of a parent, life is going to be filled with things you would never want to have but had to.

            That night in bed, I asked her, “Darby, do you remember what Mom said?”

            She quickly bit back, “Darius, go to sleep! I’m tired.” She turned over to face away from me. She didn’t want anything more to cloud her thoughts. I didn’t say another word.

I knew Mom would believe. I wanted to believe too. I was certain I had to find a way to get my sister to believe with me. I had to find a way to prove to my skeptical sister what I believed was the truth.

I thought long and hard about how I would get her there. Then I remembered that note card in the cabin. The one in the journal I was looking at. On the note card, I remembered a reference to a map of encounters. I remembered that Owensville was handwritten on the card next to the typed entry. This got me excited. There's a map! I was sure of it. I just needed to get a hold of it, and I knew it had to be in the cabin. Then Darby would see that I was right, and she was so wrong. Getting that map was the proof I’d need to show her that this was all real.

While we were talking in our bed that night, Grandma Mimi had been listening at the door. Mimi would tell me later she could hear the hurt in her granddaughter’s short answers. She told me that after hearing Darby, she went to the kitchen window and looked at the moon baying in the dark skies. She said she closed her eyes and was quiet with her thoughts for a moment. She felt foolish. She had been allowing herself to act as if nothing terrible had happened to us, her grandkids. She felt a tinge of pain in her chest, in her heart. It was guilt. Guilt over not being more involved in our lives before and after the death of her parents. She knew that she and Jack had made mistakes. She hoped that this visit with us would be a way to correct the mistake they had made. She asked for help to make things right. There would be no certainty. She hoped, nonetheless.