Grandpa

This morning while drinking my desperately needed strong cup of coffee as I sat in the bedroom, looking at several sections of paper towel littering the desk beside me, I was taken back to the days of visiting my grandparents. My maternal grandfather was a large man — I thought he was like Santa Claus, but without the facial or head hair!

Grandpa was a smoker from the age of 13. He was a serious smoker…rolling his next unfiltered cigarette before finishing the current one. He smoked in the house, in his workshop where he raised budgies, in his shed and in his backyard. In the evenings he would move into the living room lay back in his lazy-boy chair and conclude his day smoking a pipe.

The connection with the paper towels that I mentioned is that grandpa would frequently go to the little bathroom three steps from his breakfast nook. The breakfast nook is where he started every morning, listening to the police scanner, drinking strong black coffee waiting for grandma to prepare his breakfast of Italian sausage and two fried eggs. I assume they were eggs…the thick “sprinkling” of ground black pepper made them unrecognizable. We knew that as he entered the bathroom we would hear the disgusting sound of coughing up phlegm. We would try to find excuses to hurry outside before the spitting happened. Out of 10 grandchildren, only one took up smoking — his example kept the rest of us from trying it.

When Grandpa was elderly and in a care home his doctor suggested that he give up smoking and potentially live longer. So he did. Just like that.