Things Grandpa Taught Me

The other day Grandpa was feeling a little down and when I asked why, he told me he felt old. "Old!" I said, "Why you've ALWAYS been old. Do you realize, as long as I've known you, you've been a grandfather?"

It took him a few seconds to digest this. Then he smiled and his doldrums were forgotten.

But when I sat down to write this, that same thought got me thinking: I really don't know the Wildon Colbaugh most people know. I never knew him as a child, growing up in New Mexico and Southern Oregon. I never knew him as a college student, studying agriculture at Oregon State, or at Central Bible Institute (Central Bible College today) planning to become a minister. I never knew him as a groom, marrying Florence Johnson, a beautiful Swedish girl from Chicago. I never knew him as a pastor in North Carolina, Medford, or Beaverton. I never knew him as a father to four children.

Others will have to tell about those Wildon Colbaughs. I can only tell about the one I know, my Grandpa.

I grew up without a father. My dad was killed in a car acccident when I was a baby. Grandpa, in many ways, became my father. I lived with Grandma and Grandpa, at various times, for about half my childhood.

My earliest memories of Grandpa are filled with an odd mixture of adoration and fear. I was tiny and he was a large, imposing man. That meant there was no better place for a warm bear hug, but that was also a hug that could crush you.

Once when I was little I woke up in the middle of the night. I was troubled and I wanted to go crawl into Grandma and Grandpa's bed, which in the room right next to mine. I made it as far as the doorway of my room, but I was too terrified to go around the corner. I could hear a lion growling! It was a horrible noise, a rising and falling rumbling, and I knew the lion was hungry and wanted to eat me. I stayed there petrified in the doorway, freezing in the chilly night, hearing that awful growl, for what seemed like half the night, before finally getting the courage to go back to bed where I shivered wide-eyed under the blankets and listened to that lion.

The next morning I told Grandma and Grandpa about the lion. I may have embellished a tad -- I think I mentioned seeing some of his yellow fur poking out beneath the door -- but I told the story with the utter sincerity of a child: I believed it completely.

Grandma and Grandpa looked at each other and started laughing. I was puzzled and horrified. Didn't they realize the seriousness of the situation? I mean, there was a LION in the house!!!

Finally Grandma explained that the sound I'd heard was Grandpa snoring.

The "lion" incident wasn't intentional, of course. But once Grandpa tried to scare me on purpose. It wasn't long after he'd lost his left eye to cancer. He was shaving and must have nicked a nerve, because he suddenly burst into my room, shaving cream all over his face, eyeball missing, and roaring like a monster with his hands pawing at the air.

I didn't know whether to be afraid or to laugh. I'd never seen Grandpa behave like that before so it seemed oddly out of character. Thereafter he always denied being the shaving cream monster.

His fake eye caused a few adventures. Once it popped out while he was getting his feet measured for new shoes. The sales guy almost fainted! It even came out in church once and rolled right down the aisle. Uncle Phil was in the middle of his sermon and I was given the assignment of crawling under the pews and trying to retrieve it without anyone noticing.

* * *

Grandpa taught me how to watch football -- the American kind, not the world kind I watch today. Sunday afternoons he'd start the game on TV, lie on the couch, and start snoring. I'd climb up over the back of the sofa and slip down between Grandpa and the back of the couch, and worm my way into the crevice. It was snuggly warm and Grandpa's snoring no longer frightened me. I guess Grandpa also taught me to take afternoon naps!

Grandpa must have known I'd end up caring for him in his later years as he prepared me well. I remember breakfast one morning when I was a young kid when he showed me how to butter toast. Most people take toast-buttering for granted, but there's a science to it. You don't just slather on butter willy-nilly so part of it is soggy and part is as dry as, well, toast.

The trick is consistency. You want just the right amount of butter all over every bit of bread. And I do mean every bit: a key mistake most make is to ignore the edges and it's the crust that needs the butter the most.

Of course Grandpa's extensive toast-buttering lesson ruined me for life: no one else butters it right so I have to do it myself. My mom gave up after the third rejection, when I found yet another spot of toast she'd missed, and I've buttered my own bread ever since.

But at least Grandpa appreciated my toast-buttering skills. While living with me, he insisted on a breakfast of toast with eggs and bacon every day. And I mean *every* day. Pancakes, waffles, cereal didn't interest him. He wanted his eggs, bacon, and toast.

But toast-buttering, as valuable a skill as that is, is just the beginning of what Grandpa taught me.

When I was six or so, I left the toilet seat up in Grandpa's bathroom. (I always liked his bathroom best because it had a table with magazines on it in front of the toilet... now that I think about it, I guess that's another thing he taught me.) Grandpa discovered I'd left the seat up and tracked me down, marched me into the bathroom, and made me put it down.

Leaving the seat up, he explained, was an insult to others, especially women. "But Grandma never uses your bathroom," I told him, but he said it didn't matter, that I needed to get into the habit of respecting others, women especially. Even in the little things.

I haven't left the seat up since, even when I lived alone.

I always listened to Grandpa, at least when I was little and modest. I respected him. He was a wise man. He spoke with his actions. There were certain things he believed in and nothing in the world would change his mind.

When I hit the rebellious teen phase, this caused problems. I'll never forget one fierce debate we had (in part because of the topic, but also because our argument was concluded by the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger). During my explorations of philosophy, I wanted to discuss the nature of morality, so I proposed a question: "If God didn't exist, would murder be wrong?" But to my frustration, Grandpa was unable to handle the hypothetical. He just couldn't imagine a world without God.

At the time I thought this was a dire weakness. Now I know it was a particular kind of strength: I wish I had his conviction and unshakable faith. Things were certainly simpler for him. While I debate and waffle and wonder, Grandpa just accepted and believed. There's peace in that.

* * *

Not all of Grandpa's lessons were beneficial, however. Some of them are positively viral, and I've sadly been infected. For instance, Grandpa taught me to save things. It might have been his Depression-era upbringing, but he didn't like to throw anything away. While waste isn't good, there is a time for disposal.

I inherited this curse and I've fought it my entire life. (I didn't realize it was a curse until recently, when I moved. Now I'm convinced!) It was during high school when I first realized this "saving thing" wasn't necessarily a positive characteristic. When I lived with Grandpa and Grandma in Springfield, Missouri, Grandpa had a plastic bag in the bottom right hand drawer of his desk. Every day he took the rubber band off the day's newspaper and put it in this bag. This taught me the value of not wasting things.

Until ten years later, in Canby, I needed a rubber band and remembered Grandpa's stash. The bag -- much grown -- was still kept it in the same drawer, though his desk was in the garage. I went to retrieve a rubber band and found this whole bag of old rubber bands had congealed into a large mass of rubber strings. The bands were brittle, breaking at the slightest touch; utterly useless. This taught me the value of not saving things beyond their time.

Grandpa also taught me about rock and roll music. It was evil, of course. From the devil! I agreed whole-heartedly, even as my friend Matt and I used to play over and over, for hours on end, a really cool song called "Crocodile Rock" I had on one of my records. Years later, I was shocked -- SHOCKED -- to learn that that song is considered "rock and roll!"

When I was about eight, Grandpa and Grandma looked sad at breakfast one day. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"Elvis Presley died," Grandpa said.

I whooped and cheered, "Hooray!"

They were horrified. "But I thought rock and roll was evil. And Elvis Presley is the king of rock and roll, so it's good that he's dead. Right?"

Wrong. Apparently it was sad that Elvis had died.

Life's confusing when you're eight.

* * *

Grandpa taught me to anticipate things. I've never seen anyone more excited about getting up at four in the morning, driving to the middle of nowhere, hiking for miles while carrying awkward, sharp equipment, sticking worms on hooks with cold-numbed fingers, and waiting endlessly for something, ANYTHING, to happen. He and I never caught a single fish. I didn't really like those early morning fishing trips, but I went along mainly because it was so much fun to see Grandpa act as giddy as a kid on Christmas.

One time while in high school we were planning to go on an extended fishing trip and he was so excited. He got us a fishing permit, went and bought us new sleeping bags, fishing poles, and reels. This was weeks in advance.

Not long after this preparation, my cousin Philip was at the house and we decided he'd sleep over that night. We got permission from Grandma and his parents, but we didn't ask Grandpa. I thought I'd be fun to use the new sleeping bags we'd just bought, so I got them from the closet and unrolled them.

Grandpa came in and hit the roof. He was livid, absolutely furious! He ripped the sleeping bag from my hands. "How dare you!" he shouted. "This is *MY* sleeping bag!"

I was flabbergasted and bewildered. I watched, stunned, as he marched to the middle of the room and unrolled the bag. Then he unzipped it and climbed inside. He zipped himself closed and shut his eyes as though sleeping. Phil and I looked at each other, baffled.

Suddenly Grandpa woke up, got out of the sleeping bag, and handed it to Philip. "Okay, you can use it now. I've had my turn."

Phil and I started laughing hysterically. Grandpa just HAD to be the first to use his new sleeping bag!

* * *

Growing up Grandpa was always the strongest person I knew. He ran into his share of medical problems -- the lost eye, for instance. And I'll never forget when he had a kidney stone removed and that day he came back from the hospital and proudly showed me the purple stitching of the incision.

It was in high school when I first had a hint of Grandpa's mortality. He'd always had asthma and he'd have long fits of coughing where his face would go blood-red and the veins would bulge on his forehead and I thought for certain his round head was going to explode like something from a cheesy horror movie.

This really bothered me. God had blessed me with healthy relatives and I hadn't truly experienced the death of a loved one. My grandmother on my father's side had passed when I was young, and of course I was less than eight months old when my father died. How would I handle the death of my grandfather? I couldn't begin to imagine such a tragedy.

I watched Grandpa for days. In health class they were telling us about the signs of heart attack, stroke, and other catastrophes, and though I didn't say anything, I kept my eye on Grandpa and after he'd cough I would ask subtle questions like "Is your left side going numb?"

This became a self-feeding obsession. The more I thought about Grandpa dying, the more convinved I became that it was going to happen. I began to worry about Grandma, too. Both were really old, absolutely ancient, on their last legs. It could happen at any time. After a couple weeks of this, I was becoming paranoid about their safetly.

One day I realized this was not healthy for me. The constant worrying was a distraction and I was neglecting my own health, ignoring school work, and I figured that swirling black pit in my stomach was an ucler developing. (We'd learned about uclers in health class.)

Finally I went to the Lord. I knelt and prayed. "Lord," I said, "I don't know what you have planned for Grandma and Grandpa. I don't know how much time they have left, if it's a day or a year or a decade, but I'm going to leave it in Your hands. I entrust them to You. I put them in Your care. I give them to you."

Suddenly my stomach stopped churning. I literally felt lighter, as though a physical burden had been removed. I rose up, breathing freely for the first time in weeks. I ran and hugged Grandma and Grandpa. I still didn't know any more about their fate than I did before, so on the surface nothing had changed.

But something had changed.

I was no longer worrying about them. I had given them to God, and it was up to Him to take care of them.

Though I'm sad Grandpa is gone, I'm not worried. He's with the Lord, and there can't be a better place for him.

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