Lady slippers and love

My grandfather, whom I called Puppy, could have been described as crusty or grumpy.

He was a structural engineer who at the mention of the word architect might turn slightly red and the word idiots might be the most acceptable things that were said...most of the others, had I said them, I would have been sent to my room, mouth washing with soap, not an acceptable practice in our family.

There's the saying that this or that person doesn't suffer fools gladly...he didn't suffer fools at all. He banished them.

I was told he was brilliant: when he took his qualifying exam for his engineer's license his score was 100%. He worked on bolstering the structure of the domes of the Boston State House and the Christian Science Monitor.

One of the greatest sins he could imagine was defiling a book. There was a ritual in opening a new book page by page and running one's finger down the middle. Once when I was angry for a reason long forgotten, I tore a page out a book to punish him. Of course, he never knew because I hid the book among the others in our library.

My mother told me how he predicted the coming of WWII long before Hitler and Japan first attacked anything.

His idea of heaven was working in his garden and as a child I never had a vegetable that hadn't been grown there.

His idea of hell was having to go anywhere. He was content at home with his beloved wife and me.

Although he died when I was four, I remember his white, white hair (why couldn't I have inherited that gene?) and his willingness to enter into my games. He was Freddie Bobbsey to my Flossie as I recreated and created adventures that resembled the ones he read to me from the series.

We lived on 14 acres of land. The front was a pine grove. To the right of the house was a lawn with flower beds of irises, roses, violets, lilies, lily-of-valley, lilacs as well as my swing. Behind the house was a good-for-sledding slope and below was the garden. Behind the garden was a wood that I was told never to go into because it was swampy and had quicksand. (It didn't). His tool shed later became my playhouse.

Every spring, he would go into the wood and pick one perfect lady slipper that he would present to my grandmother. It said, I love you even if he couldn't speak the words. 

Love can be a flower or pretending to be Freddie Bobbsey.