Grandad Turns 64

He's got less hair now, also a
surprising beard,
and she is 16, but any
grandad who takes his
granddaughter to a Father/Daughter
Ball is wonderful in my book.

He's 64 and feels it in his bones,
the elbow that is sore and keeps him
up at night, down to the marrow.
The beard is new; we ask if he will
keep it, grow it long like all the guys
on shows he used to watch but doesn't now.
He's into news these days, as if he thinks
that something in the headlines might
come crashing in, affect him, shorten
life as we have come to know it, and the
televangelists, the ones he's always thought
were good and sometimes, guys I tell
him I have heard are fake. He listens
to the music channel, hymns with
Bible verses written over pretty scenes
in nature. He reads a little as he sits
there on the couch, a heating pad held
tight upon his arm while ISIS yells
a little more upon the big screen that
our son bequeathed a year or so ago;
we like his hand-me-downs. He says
we should be on a cruise, not raising
grandkids, but we are, and maybe it
has kept us young, and maybe it has
turned us gray, but we're both glad
that we are here when others need us,
glad that they are here (well, almost
always), and he is a good grandfather,
64, perhaps a little older than he ever
thought that he would be - he works so
hard, or did, that everyone opined he'd
kick off young, but then he didn't.
Quite too late for that. Although I know
some people who are young at 64,
he isn't one of them. He feels it. Which
is perfectly okay. On birthdays, it's allowed.
Tomorrow he'll be called upon to get up,
do things, be a dad to children who are
blessed, more blessed than even they
could know, to have him in their lives.



(c) Ellen Gillette, 2015