I had a dream about my grandpa last night.
(In line with how most dreams go, it was weird.)
We were in Chicago. No idea how I knew that.
We passed a mini golf course, and I commented on how cool it looked.
“That’s the golf course I saw on TV. It has the longest putt in the world!”
My grandpa, a very fast walker who was always in front of me when we were going places, turned to look at the course, jingled the change in his pocket, and promptly said: “Let’s go.”
My Grampa Vic was the closest thing I had to a genie. If I mentioned something, he would try to make it happen. Not material things; he didn’t gift me with gifts, rather, he gifted me with the notion that everything was possible. He loved to find things, and fix things. And he was good at it.
If I mentioned my basketball hoop was unusable because the rim was bent down, I’d come home from school the next day, and he’d have jimmied up the rim with a 2X4 resting on a piece of plywood, offering me a rubber mallet before I could put my backpack down.
If I said I had a hankering for pancakes, but we didn’t have a car, he threw me my jacket, and we’d walk 2 miles to the restaurant, with him up in front the whole time.
One thing we loved to do together is go to the town flea market. He’d look at old tools, and I’d try to sneak a look at girly magazines. He wouldn’t buy me fireworks, which I complained about as a kid, but eventually realized that’s the answer I wanted him to give.
I felt safe around my grandpa. He was a barrel-chested Viking of a man, who always wore the same 3 short-sleeve polyester, button-up shirts with his glasses pouch sticking out of the chest pocket. Much like most grandpas in our nostalgic memories, he smelled like aftershave, and his jaw felt like sandpaper.
After the flea market we’d hit the Redwood Cafe, which was an ancient eatery on the south end of the flea market property. The floors bowed, and the tables wobbled.
Grampa Vic loved to wager the waitresses that I could eat 2 breakfasts in one sitting. I was a skinny little stick of a boy (and they loved his eager smile), so they would always bet against me. And I’d always win, gulping down a stack of pancakes and a cheese omelet, including the homefries, and toast.
Each and every time, he’d laugh. And when he laughed, he’d laugh with all his breath with his mouth open so I could see his gold fillings in the way back.
“You didn’t think he’d eat all that food, did ya?” He’d say, laughing and playing with his napkin in both hands. “Your eyes just about bugged out of your head when you saw his plate was empty.”
And the waitresses would do their part: “I can’t believe he ate all that!”
The adult-me realizes that it was a game they were playing, but the kid-me would just sit back, quite uncomfortably full, and lick his chops and pat his belly like a proud lion.
It was part of our routine. He’d challenge me to do something that I didn’t think I could do, or that I didn’t think could be done at all. And then I’d do it.
So, when I found myself at the mini-golf course with him in my dream, it’s not surprising that there was an optional challenge to get to the first hole. You had to climb, hand-over-hand, up a black cable that got steeper and steeper, until you reached the top of the course, where the first hole was.
I hopped up there without even thinking about it, and, unlike real life (I’m afraid of heights), I wasn’t scared at all. My body was light; I could have climbed like that all day.
“He’s gonna do it!” the mini-golf person at the top said, and everyone looked up at me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my Grampa Vic down below, using the railing to pull himself up the stairs, looking up at me, after every step, and laughing that breathy laugh of his.
In the real world, I never got to be an adult around him; I was always a kid, my mom’s son. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was playing a role too.
He died when I was 19. Got hit by a drunk driver while traversing a crosswalk. He was on his way to the mall to read Halloween stories to the kids. I was in college. And just days before I got the call from my mom, I thought to myself: I should plan a trip to see Grampa Vic. Just me and him. Just us.
I never got to go on that trip, never even planned it. And I never got to play that monumental mini-golf course in my dream.
When I woke up, I tried to hold that fresh image of him in my mind as long as I could, a bird’s-eye view of him looking up at me while pulling his heavy frame up the stairs.
It made me happy and sad at the same time.
Happy, because, for the first time in a while, I could see him.
And sad because I wished my dream lasted long enough for me to get to the top of the course, and for him to get to the top of the course, and for what came after that.