I often wonder what it would have been like to have had a grandfather. Oh, I had grandfathers to be sure, only I never had the privilege of meeting any of them. To be completely open about it, I'll never know exactly how many I never knew. The ones I heard a smattering of stories about include James Nash Richey, the Irish barber who died in a Model T Ford on the way back to Port Neches from a hunting trip when his daughter, my mother, was still an infant. Mom was the youngest of six siblings, the four oldest being boys much older than she, and one older sister who was never fully there and later took her own life. All that remains of Grandpa Richey (I have no idea what monicker he would have chosen for himself) is a small, slightly faded, black and white photograph that shows him standing behind an old fashioned barber's chair with a customer seated near a counter littered about with glass bottles of lotion and talcum powder, brushes of various sizes and types, and a straight razor. Another bearded man stands in the corner of the image, and the whole scene leaves me wondering how long it was taken before the fatal Tin Lizzie accident, if these men were friends and perhaps hunting companions, why he chose barbering as his profession, did he like sweet potato pie, and the like.
The other man who qualifies as my grandfather was Henry Pleasant Fowlkes. According to my mother (Dad never said much to me about his father), Grandpa Fowlkes was a kind and soft-spoken man driven to the drink by a not-so-kind and anything but soft-spoken wife. Evidently, Mamie Fowlkes made life a nightmarish version of hell on earth, and Henry did what he could to cope, drifting from job to job, selling cars, delivering milk, working on assembly lines, and who knows what else. He came from good stock in Franklin, Tennessee, and must have been something of a disappointment to his father, Henry Pleasant, Sr., a Princeton alumnus, who held prominent positions in Franklin as an attorney, judge, elder in the Presbyterian church, Speaker of the House for the Tennessee legislature in 1879, and trustee of Central Hospital for the Insane for twenty years. Mom said that Dad's dad was generous to a fault, and died much too soon in her opinion, but perhaps just about right in his.
I have other grandfathers whose names I'll never know because of my dual heritage as an adopted son. Through genealogical research I have learned something about my adoptive lineage, but only with an active imagination am I able to conjure up anything about my genetically connected heritage. I fantasized as a child, at times, about the circumstances that led a young woman to enter Sellers Baptist Home in New Orleans, give birth to and relinquish her infant son, likely without ever knowing he had his father's blue eyes, or his grandfather's Romanesque nose, or his mother's lack of height with a propensity toward added weight showing up under his chin. She may have been a wealthy heiress attempting to protect her family from the disgrace of an illegitimate heir. Perhaps she was an exotic nightclub singer whose past caught up with her, or possibly a mysterious immigrant with nowhere else to turn. More likely, she was simply a naive young lady who made an inescapable blunder and opted to give away her mistake rather than attempt to erase it. What did her father think about her choices and actions? What would he have thought about me? And then there's the "father." Did he know? Did he agree? Did he care? Did his father know? What did he think? What would he have thought about me?
There was one man that I asked to be my grandfather even though he wasn't. Henry Sutherland was a small, quiet man who was a member of our church in Port Arthur. I don't remember a lot about him except that he was a kindly henpecked man, and that he took care of the electronics related to the church's sound system, meaning he was always in church. One evening the Sutherlands were visiting in our home and I marched right up to him and asked him to be my grandfather. For years I called him Grandpa and I think it made him feel special; we enjoyed an unusual bond, but I must admit that I allowed youth and distance to weaken its hold over time until it faded into the background without disappearing altogether.
Buechner writes of his own ancestors, "I would give so much to know about who they were, both for its own sake and also for the sake of learning something more about who I am myself" (The Longing for Home: Reflections at Midlife). I identify with his longing to learn more, but what I do know is that I am who I am by the grace of God, and I am becoming who I will be because of that same grace. I did not choose the circumstances surrounding my origin any more than I could have worked my way into God's good graces; everything is according to the goodness and good pleasure of the Father. When I stop to notice my mirrored reflection I have no clue who I might resemble, if, in fact, I resemble anyone at all, but grace is the looking glass that allows me to peer at myself and see what I can be, not what I once was.
"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (1Corinthians 13:12), NIV)
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