After some reflection following the passing of my Grandma Doris Sympson, I returned to a piece I originally wrote twenty years ago with some fresh thoughts about the influence she shared with Grandpa Ian upon my life. I humbly submit it with gratitude to her memory, which will forever be a blessing. Hers was a quietly creative life well-lived: ever more a rarity.

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Some memories are tactile.

People often talk about a song or scent taking them back, but there are certain textures that do the same thing for me.

Like the ridges on a black walnut.

They take me back to a childhood Saturday spent tirelessly picking up hundreds of pounds of walnuts, my progress marked by the thwongda thwongda of walnuts drumming into the bottom of a freshly emptied bucket and woven fescue sacks slowly swelling with their lumpy burdens. Evening found me in the passenger side of a 1967 Chevy step side pickup outside Crossroads Store, slumped with exhaustion against the rough upholstery of the seat cover. Between my fingers blackened with overripened walnut hulls slid the grain of a well-worn fifty dollar bill. The war-weary walnut huller dutifully rattled on in the background while I marveled at my newfound wealth in the summer swelter.

Or the rough, hand-engraved letters on the Swiss Army knife my Grandpa Don gifted me as a boy.

On one side is “Justin,” with a double stem on the J as though he planned to embolden the letters and thought better of it. On the other side, “Freeman,” and then squeezed along the edge, “Dora, MO.” I doubt Grandpa had any inkling at the time how far afield I would eventually venture, but he knew Dora would never be too big in either of our lifetimes for the knife to not find its way back to me once it was there. The large blade still bears the wear of my momentary zeal at the thought of whittling a baseball bat for myself out of a length of the trunk of a fallen ash sapling.

The wood was tougher than my resolve. It may still be propped up in my parents’ basement, wondering where I’ve gone or what it was to become.

Or the old boxed, variable speed record player commemorating my Grandpa Ian and Grandma Doris’s first Christmas. It has a marble textured, patinaed case and, last I attempted, still spins them like a pro. I wonder about every little nick and scratch on the thing, trying to envision the circumstances that brought them about. It brims with their presence, still bearing Grandpa’s trademark embossed label maker stickers, proudly declaring “This Side Up,” “Our 1st Christmas,” and “40 Years,” the latter of which is itself over thirty years old.

It still smells sweetly of old dust and vinyl, taking me back to childhood days spent with the two of them. I would play Chinese Checkers with Grandpa with the tin click and scratch of Grandma’s knitting needles keeping time in the background, half a slipper dangling beneath them. It was as though she were slowly summoning it through a tiny gap in the spacetime continuum she had snipped open with her embroidery scissors. After our game he would quietly lean back to read the Horse Trader - a local classified ad newspaper which, ironically, only occasionally featured horses - and gave me an opportunity to occupy myself.

In the days before cell phones in a humble home with no computer and a television they next to never turned on, I found quiet curiosities to explore. Watching water condense and cascade down the spiral of the dehumidifier coil. Watching the pine cone-shaped weights slowly descend beneath Grandpa’s prized cuckoo clock. Experimenting with Grandma’s piano to see how fast I could depress the keys without striking the hammer. Or obliging Grandpa’s desire for me to try a childhood favorite of his: Pepsi and Peanuts. It is what it sounds like - drinking a bottle of Pepsi you’ve dumped salted peanuts into. I figured out halfway through he hadn’t passed that particular gene on to me, but I never dreamed of not finishing it down to every last waterlogged peanut.

At some point we would inevitably pile into their 1964 Ford Fairlane for some adventure or another. It was, in and of itself, a cornucopia of textures.

The slight blistering of the sea foam green paint.

The bubbled, embossed pattern on the vinyl covered seats that would, over a certain temperature, slightly give way when pressed before reverting to its intended form.

The scratchy, sun-bleached carpet on the ledge behind the backseat.

The ribs of creaking plastic on the cigarette lighter-powered oscillating fan clamped to the dashboard, which served as the car’s sole air conditioner.

The wooden handle of the errant hammer in the back floorboard - the presence of which was neither questioned nor explained for years on end - slickened with some combination of use and collateral contact with neighboring lubricants in the life it led somewhere before becoming an unwilling underfoot hobo.

He and Grandma and I would speculate about all manner of things over the putter of the engine. How the rain was lashing against the windshield so hard it looked like transparent splatters of bird poop. How people could possibly bring themselves to spend a hundred dollars on this new rollerblade fad. How cranberry juice is much more tart than other juices. How the two of them managed to tune out the trains at night living a hundred yards from the tracks. Why Grandpa “wouldn’t give fifteen cents” for a front wheel drive car (and silently wondering whether he had a price below that). How computers could never replace marbles, Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, and pogo sticks. How ridiculous it was that gas was over a dollar a gallon now, and how, by some unknown means, the traffic light at Broadway and 63 had it in for them.

But never Korea.

In so many hours, so many discussions, so many subjects, so many afternoons whiled away in the nursing home foyer visiting Grammy or taking a load off at Donlo’s Flea Market, they never breathed a word about Grandpa having been in the Korean War. After he died of a heart attack in July of 2000, his obituary emotionlessly informed me that he had served on an aircraft carrier during the war. The revelation also brought the realization Grandma had been in the Army, serving as a nurse’s aide.

I had mixed emotions at the time. At first, I felt a little miffed, feeling as though I’d been left out of the loop. I think I know better now, though.

I realize now that they weren’t concerned with deceiving me. They had the wisdom to know that I needed a childhood as free from worry and anxiety as possible - the wisdom to know that, even as a teenager, I needed to be able to spend time not with Grandpa the seafaring warrior and Grandma the Army veteran, but with Grandpa the Grandpa and Grandma the Grandma.

The Grandpa who sat and listened to swap and trade shows on AM radio, seemingly for the sole purpose of proclaiming judgment on the quality of the deals.

The Grandma who patiently explained why jeans were not a good gift idea for her.

The Grandpa who took an ill-advised turn or three in a Chinese Checkers game just to see me beam with pride in my victory.

The Grandma who warmed me to the core bouncing with hoots and cackles at my jokes.

The Grandpa who took pleasure in spinning Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole 45’s, exposing me to a style of music that I’d never heard before, and that still influences me to this day. The crackles and hisses giving way to rich melody is a warm memory, sending me back to that deep scarlet carpet, bunched and beaten by time and travel, jamming Tinkertoys together beneath loving gazes and dreaming of saving the world.

Little did I know that, in more ways than one, Grandpa and Grandma had already saved it for me.