Friday, August 22, 2014

Gonna Be a Fine Day

Though medical forms and genealogists may refer to him as my paternal grandfather, to myself, my sister, and all of our friends he has always been ‘Opi’.  He passed away on July 2nd, 2014. 

It was an exceptionally cool day for Missouri in the summer.  The temperature topped out around 77 degrees and the humidity was almost non-existent.  It was the kind of day about which Opi would exclaim, “Wow, what a great day.  Boy, doesn’t Missouri have fine weather?”  I’m not sure if he would have said that last part to everyone, or if it was a sentiment he reserved for me.  I was raised in the mild climate of Washington State and complained frequently about the unbearable Missouri heat; Opi good-naturedly stood up for his home state every chance he got.

I still picture him sitting in his rolling desk chair (it was better for his back) at his kitchen table.  He is wearing his sweatpants, a flannel shirt and his zip up red sweatshirt jacket.  His hands, covered with age spots, are deftly breaking up the dark chocolate for the little square tupperware that was kept perennially on the table.  Though the bulk of the responsibility of keeping and maintaining their lifestyle had gradually fallen to Omi, Opi, as far as I know, was always the breaker of the chocolate.

My regrets about his death are ordinary.  I should have visited more often.  I should have called more frequently.  I should have told him how much I loved, admired, and respected him.  For the past several years, I have been meaning to get down to Rolla to interview Opi about his life.  I wanted to hear about his childhood, his young-adulthood.  The way he existed before me, and his life before he became Opi.  Of course I can’t ask him about those things now, and I feel robbed of what I’m sure would have been a remarkable story.

Milton Monroe and Maria Louise, before they became Omi and Opi.
Instead, I am left with only what I remember about my grandfather’s life.  But that’s a story worth telling too.

Opi graduated from the Missouri School of Mines, which was later known as the University of Missouri-Rolla and is now known as Missouri S&T.  He worked in the field of metallurgy, and to be honest, I never knew exactly what that meant.  My point of pride was that I could pronounce ‘metallurgy’; the actualities of the job were never really a concern for me.

Opi has been retired since my earliest memories of him.  My sister remembers him leaving for work in the mornings, with a lunch that Omi packed for him, but to me he has always been one half of ‘Omi and Opi’, endlessly available to play with my sister and me during our trips to Missouri and their trips to Washington.
Opi, our endlessly available playmate.
Omi and Opi came to our house almost every year for Christmas.  My sister and I always bought Opi a big tub of Andes mints as his present.  He set it on top of the fridge during his stay and Laura and I would mill around the kitchen asking for one every five minutes.  I actually don’t remember it being every five minutes, but now that I have kids and know something about their attention spans and persistence for candy, I think it is an accurate assumption.  We were always allowed to have a mint with Opi during his coffee breaks, which weren’t every five minutes, but still pretty frequent.

Every morning, Opi did his ‘morning exercises’.  I would lay down on the floor next to him and pretend to do sit ups or push ups until I got bored and ran off to undoubtedly antagonize someone else.  My parents, my grandparents, and my sister and me would play Mille Bornes at night before bed.  Laura was usually on the ‘girls’ team while I played with Opi and Dad on the ‘boys’ team.  I never minded being the honorary boy.

My family went back to Missouri about every other year during Laura’s and my summer breaks.  The visit to ‘Hard Scrabble Hill,’ as we called Omi’s and Opi’s was, especially when we were younger, a highlight of the trip.  Opi used to put on a pair of special shoes and get out a platform he made and clog.  If I remember correctly, he was pretty good.  Laura and I would stand next to him or on the platform when he finished and try to mimic his footwork.


In the evenings, Opi would place cookies that Omi had baked on a plate on the table and say, “help yourselves, these are for general consumption.”  My cousins would later nickname Opi ‘General Consumption’ and he was soon joined by ‘Major Nuisance’ and ‘Private Public’.  

Sometimes Opi would hook up an old trailer to his tractor and let my sister, my cousins (once they were old enough), and me hop in.  We’d sit delightedly in the back while he pulled us all around the property.  Opi taught me how to identify poison ivy (leaves of three, let them be) and how to listen for the calls of katydids and whippoorwills.  (To this day I thought that katydids were birds.  You can imagine my unpleasant surprise when upon googling the spelling I discovered they are actually insects.)  At night, we’d stay up late catching lightening bugs in our hands, marveling at how warm it was even after the sun went down.

As we got older, my sister and I spent less and less time outside with Opi and more time inside, away from the heat and humidity.  We became busy with our own teenage lives, high school and then college, and our visits to Hard Scabble Hill became less frequent.  But in the winter of 2003 I decided, on a whim, to apply to grad school at the University of Missouri-Rolla.  I was accepted, and I moved to Rolla, Missouri that summer.  Omi and Opi were thrilled with my close proximity, and I loved having family near by.  At least three times a week I would go to my grandparents’ house for delicious home cooked meals and their charming company.  We would sit in their cozy, dimly-lit kitchen and discuss everything from my classes to politics and the latest ‘Car Talk’ show on NPR.

I began to know and appreciate Opi through an adult perspective.  He had a sharp but easy wit, and I loved to make him laugh.  He would throw his head back and chuckle in a distinctly ‘Opi’ way.  He had hundreds of lines of poems committed to memory and could recall them at the drop of a hat.  It is perhaps an insult to this fount of learned by rote poetry that the only one I can remember is the following haiku he learned on car talk:

Four wheel drive pick up
I remember his last words:
Hold my beer, watch this!


Opi’s love of poetry was matched by his love of music.  He sang songs I’d never heard of before in his low melodic voice, and it was not uncommon for me to walk into the kitchen during my time in Rolla and find him waiting for me with his iPad to play me his latest favorite song.  One evening he asked me, “Have you ever heard of this Baba B character, Rebecca-lein?  Boy, he is a big guy.  His music is really neat!”

The songs that reminds me most of Opi are, “Fine Day” and “Sun Arise” by Rolf Harris.  We probably listened to “Fine Day” dozens of times together, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Opi sang it to himself every morning.  I think he just got it stuck in his head and would hum or sing it almost subconsciously until the next time he played it.  If Opi had a theme song, ‘Fine Day,’ with its didgereedoo and upbeat sound, would be it.

Omi has always been an excellent cook, and I think both Omi and Opi have always really preferred to have their meals cooked at home.  But there was the occasional Tuesday that Omi had her German luncheon at her house.  On these days, Omi would pack Opi an apple and send him off to Arby’s for lunch.  “She kicked me out again,” Opi would fake-grumble.  I met him at Arby’s when I was able, and we’d visit over our roast beef sandwiches.  When I had to return to my classes or my schoolwork Opi would say, “Gee, I wonder if I can go back home yet?”

In my second year of grad school I invited Omi and Opi to the movies.  We went to Forum Cinema, Rolla’s only theatre.  I would be willing to bet money that before then, they hadn’t been to a movie in at least twenty years, and they probably didn’t go again after.  We saw Elf, and Opi insisted on paying for my ticket too.  I sat next to Opi, and I can remember him throwing his head back and chuckling on a couple of occasions.  After the movie, when we were back outside and squinting into the over bright sunlight, Opi remarked cheerfully, “what a dumb movie!”  Elf has since become one of my all time favorite movies, and I think of Opi each time I watch it.
UMR Graduation, December 2005
When I graduated, I moved away from Rolla, and again became busy with life away from Hardscrabble Hill.  Chris and I got married and eventually moved to Florissant, Missouri, which is where we lived when Opi turned 80.  I was seven months pregnant at Opi’s birthday party, and although he knew I would attend, he was not expecting my parents or my aunt and cousin to be flying in as well.  Opi was sweetly bewildered to see his family showing up at the door.  “What a pleasant surprise,” he said.  “Where did you guys come from?”

At 80, Opi was still pretty spry.  Though he had lost some of his height by then, he was not as stooped as he would become; he had more energy than he would in later years.  But I remember the change in how he would answer when I’d ask, “Opi, how are you doing?”

Whereas he used to say, “oh, pretty good” or “very well, thank you” or “can’t complain,” it was about this time that the answer became most often, “fair to middling”.  But he said it in good spirits.  Always.

The last time I saw Opi was over memorial day weekend, 2014.  My parents and aunt had flown in again, and though Opi was often snoozing in his ‘inner sanctum’ (the back bedroom where he rested), when he was awake he was happy.  I think he got a kick out of watching the girls running in and out of the kitchen, and he was content to sit out on the front porch and enjoy the view from the home that he and Omi built together.
The view from Omi's and Opi's front porch.
The day that Opi passed away, Allie asked me why I was sad.  “Well, he was very old,” she said knowledgeably.

“I know,” I answered, “but I still really miss him.”

“Me too.  But you know where he’ll always be?” she said, patting my chest lightly, “in your heart.”

Which of course is pretty cheesy, but none-the-less true.