Grandpa

My grandpa had two years of formal education. The first, in a Siberian prison. The second, felling trees off the Dnieper River.

Cold is a good lesson. Ice, two fingers thick, paralyzed the inside walls of the prison. Grandpa had two down mattresses. One to sleep on and one to cover himself with.

Grandpa never learned how to swim. One afternoon, while floating oak trees down river, he fell into the water. When you’re underwater, it’s impossible to penetrate the suffocating mesh of a thousand tree trunks. My grandpa grappled an oak and surfaced.

Maybe the fact that he’s almost been killed by a bear helps him build a window frame from scratch and replace cast iron piping. His five o’clock shadow is grit 36. I’ve seen him lift a red oak coffer at 72. He’ll help lift it again when we move next summer.

In Rostov, grandpa poured a foundation without a clever cement truck. And built a house on it. One summer grandpa and I were remodeling a Victorian home in downtown Wheaton. A two inch section of intricate crown molding was missing. He whittled it out from a 2x6.