And, of course, there he is with his grandma -- his mother's mother.

These lines keep going back, of course.

I shared this old picture for a rather different reason than I shared my grandmother's old picture.

Although, I have to say -- it's those eyes again. They're different from my grandma's, but even at that age, they tell a story, and house a depth.

Can you see?

It's as if his grandmother is looking to him, for him to say something, to give her an answer.

He doesn't seem like he's gonna talk, does he?

In fact, let me tell you -- I knew him from his 60s till his 90s, and he almost never talked.

In fact, he almost never exercised, either. Or ate "healthy."

In fact, what I remember from when I was a really little kid was, he liked to watch a lot of TV, smoke cigars, and drink a little beer.

When I say all this, it sounds like he didn't do much, or wasn't much, or that, perhaps, he didn't have a rich inner life.

I'm not so sure.

Again, I come back to those eyes -- even at 3 or 4, he seems to have incredible depth of feeling, wisdom.

When he passed away last summer, my grandma -- who, to be fair, or to be clear, is not my kin, though she is my grandma, -- uncharacteristically overcome by emotion, said, "Your grandpa was a good man."

To bring a woman like that to that level of feeling, which she could only express in those simple words -- tells, and told, me a lot.

I never said why I shared that picture, though, did I?

I was getting to that, by sure if circuitous routes; haven't you learned by now not to ask me if we're there yet? Maybe I want you to see some things first, and here you are fixated on your watch.

The thing is, when my mother died, my dad and I moved cross-country, far from my mother's family, which was small, to join my father's family, which was rather larger. A single dad, a stranger in a strange land, can only do so much.

So, to be honest -- after age 5, I probably visited Bop, or had him visit me... 8 or 10 more times, until he finally passed away.

Of course, sometimes it was me staying with him for a few weeks, or him with us for a week; and later, during my couple years of wandering (here's what I mean), I made his city, and in fact his home, my home, and spent a fair bit of time with him.

A couple years before, he and my grandma had said, We'd sure love to see you again, and I heard in that, Maybe you should come see us before we die -- we may not have much longer to live.

I was right, of course, and we were all glad I stayed with them.

What I'm saying, then, is that -- in the end, I never really spent a lot of time with Bop, and in a sense, I never really knew him.

The last couple times I visited him, he sat with me for quite a while, actually, and shared, on paper and in speech, what he knew about his family line.

He was very intelligent, very meticulous, very orderly, very organized; he'd been a math teacher, a vice principal, a principal, and a math tutor. I'll come back to that.

The point, though, is that he was naturally going to be good at genealogy, and he was. He'd gathered and labeled many, many old pictures -- going back to his own great-grandparents, I think -- drawn up genealogical charts, and even printed whatever he could find from online about notable family members.

It was a "labor of love."

That's one way he showed love -- he didn't say much, but the time and love he put into what he did for you spoke for itself.

I saved those pictures and charts, and lately I've been looking at the pictures a lot.

I have to say -- the more I look at them, the better I understand him, and our family.

I see him as a toddler... a child... a young man... a middle-aged man... a retired man... an old man -- and always, he's the same.

Unperturbed. Silent. Smiling, ever so imperceptibly, from the inside.

As I said here, -- though you may not notice, reading here what has already been written, -- I just took a long pause.

I don't know what to say.

What I want to say is, my grandmother was a saint; but Bop was a sage.

I never saw him angry.

I told you that my grandmother -- Eshrat, the grandma I talked about in Pish-Dar-Aamad -- was a stranger in a strange land, not speaking a word of English; but she read people just fine. 

She said, I like your grandpa. In Farsi, she said -- "khun-sarde." Which literally means, "he's cold-blooded."

But, it doesn't mean what it does in English.

Actually, it's a compliment. It means, he's not controlled by his passions -- even-tempered, you might say.

On that note, two quick background sketches for you, and we'll place this portrait o'er the portico.

First, I told you he was a tutor. I remember that when I was a kid, both before we moved away and after, I was always hearing, "Bop is tutoring today."

The house he lived in, which just a few years ago I lived in, too, he lived in most of his adult life. My mom and aunt had lived there as kids. In the front, in the sort of ... reception-room, he had set up a desk. There, with his little lamp, he'd sit with a middle- or high-school kid, going over their math with them, while in the other room my grandma did whatever she did -- or, before he'd remarried to her, he'd just be there with the kid, in a silence like a church.

Once or twice, I remember seeing the kid coming for tutoring the first time and looking a little scared.

Why not? Kids should be cautious.

But without saying anything special -- just going over math -- Bop had a way of calming such a kid, opening him up, and putting a smile on his face.

Unperturbed, silent, shining his little light from the inside, beside the little desk-lamp outside, he radiated a healing warmth.

Second, in that same room, over in the other corner by the beautiful stone wall, the other side of which was a fireplace, was his record player.

I remember, even from when I was 4 or 5, that he had tons of records. Specifically, I remember he liked Elvis and the Beatles, but that wasn't really what he was about -- it seems he listened to everything.

Most of all, he loved classical music.

When I stayed with him as a grown man, 30 years later, he still had the record player, now with a worn-down metal chair by it (with a pad placed on it for comfort), still in that corner. He'd sit there a couple hours every day, just listening to the music.

While I was there, he shared the Lettermen with me, who I'd never heard of -- he loved the harmonies.

After I'd shared some recordings of the Gurdjieff music with him around that time -- which he said was "interesting," but which I think was a bit foreign to his ears' taste, -- he made me a CD.

I think I still have it. It was, like, an orchestral rendering of Gypsy music -- about as close to the Gurdjieff music as he'd encountered in his own journey.

It touched me deeply.

Don't get me wrong -- I feel him with me more than ever, -- but I also feel we could have had many more musical conversations like that, and I wish we had.

I have so, so much to tell him.

I don't think he's worried, though -- do you?

12 April 2022