This One Afternoon
March 11, 2021
It was the summer before my nineteenth birthday and the last summer we would have at Berryessa. Pop-pop and I were sitting out on the deck, the late afternoon sun slowly making it’s way across the sky. We were sitting together in silent company watching the water, looking out at the golden hills, the occasional wave making its way from a boat to our shore. It was one of those, “Isn’t this great” moments he or Grandma sometimes verbalized knowing we were in mutual gratitude of the view, the sounds of the water, the company of family, and a type of peace found only in the present moment.
I couldn’t tell you exactly how we came to discuss having a happy hour, but we agreed we should have fizzies. Pop-pop told me to make a batch and I happily agreed. This had been the first summer I had been allowed to drink and it was both special and strange to be able to partake. I felt so grown up. I poured our fizzies into Spanish Flat wine glasses and brought them out to the deck.
In the lake household there was a great deal of energy, and people, and sharing. We shared a bathroom, a bedroom, a dressing room, we shared our skis, the chores, hot water, a tv, space and things and attention. But in this particular afternoon, in this somewhat rare moment, it was just Pop-pop and I listening to the water, sitting and sipping.
"Now I want to talk to you about something."
Pop-pop stated this when he wanted you to know what he was about to discuss was important. And if he thought you didn't know that it was important, he'd preface it by saying, "Now listen because, this is important."
When Pop-pop wanted to talk it made me feel both special and a little nervous because, it meant he'd been thinking about something. I knew when it was an announced conversation that it would be about something important, something more significant.
He asked me what my plans were next for my life.
I had graduated high school the year before and just finished my second semester at Napa's community college. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I told him that. I also added that I was bored to death of Napa and unsure where to go or what to do next.
I suppose it was with the confidence of a father four times over that Pop-pop could speak to an angsty teen like me. He never doubted me, what I was capable of or where I was going in life. This man who had watched me fall a thousand times learning to water ski and wakeboard, circling our Sea Ray around over and over through the decades to bring us the rope so that we could try again. This amazing place where we thrived under his and Grandma's care, where daily moments of fearlessness were our normal. Jumping from rope swings, swimming under the night sky, playing games of night tag, sleeping out on the deck, playing games of boat tag, getting on a tube with Pop-pop driving the boat. Children of the wild.
Then there were all the still moments in-between. The naps, the walks, the stories. We talked, and read, and made food. We learned to be in the quiet of our minds, to truly be in the company of our loved ones. So much of life I learned with my grandparents.
I sat, listening to Pop-pop's words of encouragement. That I was smart, strong, and capable to do whatever I decided. He told me of some of his own challenges and our conversation drifted into Pop-pop’s past, an endless array of amazing and amusing stories. Pop-pop's later years still amazing and amusing, as he continued wake boarding into his 80's and cycling into his 90's, never allowing age to dictate the experiences he would have in life.
And then a fizzie refill for both Pop-Pop and I.
Another story, each one more light-hearted as our afternoon passed. Pop-pop laughs. I love his laugh. He laughs with his whole body, sometimes clapping his hands. I see and hear his laughter in my mother's laugh, loud, unapologetic, authentic. I'm told I laugh like that.
Then perhaps another half cup more of fizzy, Pop-pop telling me about his military days.
Grandma came out in the deck then—which I have to say I can’t remember why she wasn’t there to begin with. I considered that maybe she was napping while Pop-pop and I discussed life, but running the blender to make the fizzies would have woken her up from her nap, and the cousins know all too well the dangers of waking up Grandma from The Nap. But I digress.
Grandma comes out on the deck, hands on her hips. “You're having happy hour without me?”
Pop-pop and I quickly invite Grandma to join us. We also request that she help us with snacks--or horderves, as we say in the resort of Spanish Flats. Grandma made little cracker, cheese, and homemade pickle stackers and another batch of fizzies. The three of us talked, and listened, and laughed. Enjoyed.
The best part about that day on the deck was that it was both like, and unlike, so many afternoons we'd had together. There is the strongest feeling of familiarity around my memories of The Lake, they are engraved in my mind and spirit. How the first boat out on the water sounded as I ate breakfast, the moments of stillness and quiet after we had all skied and swam and were laying out on the boat drying, soaking in the warmth of the sun. The nights of watching meteors, the mornings of Grandma's pancakes, Pop-pop shouting and cheering, rubbing his hands together as he watched The Game. Hot chocolate and stories, homemade ice cream and triumph. Eating watermelon on the boat, picking berries with Grandma. A thousand rituals that brought us together through the years, connecting us together in memories and love.
A couple of weeks later Pop-pop invited me to move to Arizona to live with he and Grandma, providing me a way out of Napa. I was so excited. I moved in with them that January, arriving around the same time as my cousin Britt. She and I shared a bathroom, a bedroom, a dressing room, we shared the chores, hot water, a tv, space and things and attention. And we were (mostly) perfectly suited to that. Pop-pop and Grandma gave us a place to figure out our next chapters, the next adventure, changing the direction of my life.
I'm forever grateful for the childhood I experienced, the numerous lessons I learned, the countless moments that shaped me into who I am. I'm so proud to have Pop-pop and his legacy live on through me, through our family, all of us different expressions of Heywood. His wit, his business sense, his humor, his sense of adventure, his focus, his success, the family he built with Grandma, their daughters. All of us reflections of each other.