She seemed kind of nervous. It was Remembrance Day week. She stood at the base of a lamp post on our main street. A “Lest We Forget” banner above her acknowledged the Second World War service of her great-grandfather. There was a camera pointed at her and the editor of this newspaper making notes and taking photos. Then, she got the go-ahead to tell the story.
“My name is Layne and above me is a picture of my great-grandfather, Alex Barris,” she said into the camera. She was more relaxed now because it was a story she and I have shared a number of times.
“He was born in 1922. In 1942, he was called up by the U.S. Army. They made him a medic. And in the Battle of the Bulge he saved four members of his medical team. He received the Bronze Star.”
The video my granddaughter, Layne, recorded that day, became part of the Nov. 11 Remembrance event at her elementary school in town. I didn’t see the final product. But it didn’t matter. I have mental video of it in my head now. And in a year when we’ve all looked for something to hold on to, to give us solace, watching my granddaughter describe from memory my father’s heroism 75 years ago stays with me.
I guess we’re all trying to pull things from this pandemic-plagued year that have redeeming quality. And, like many of the things etched in my mind from 2020, you’ve probably grasped at straws too, to salvage what matters in a year that COVID has wrought such tragedy and loss on so many families in the country and around the world.
Perhaps not surprisingly, in contrast to the vastness of a global pandemic, what I treasure from 2020 are the little things, specifically moments I’ve shared with the youngest members of our family – our grandkids.
Layne’s younger brothers, while great playmates, are distinctly different people. Wyatt, the youngest, is athletic. And among my greatest joys last winter, before the March lockdown, was attending his minor-league hockey games. With dash and pleasure, he raced around the ice surface with all the abandon I don’t think I’ve ever had when I played hockey as a kid or today as an oldtimer.
Meanwhile, his older, quieter brother Sawyer, I learned, recently gave an online solo presentation speaking “for four minutes” to teacher and class. Whether on the ice or online, I’ll remember 2020 for their unique forms of expression.
In the earliest days of the lockdown, last spring, my wife and I knew for safety we couldn’t enjoy the normal grandparent pleasures – hugging and kissing the grandchildren. We had to settle for periodic visits with our other grandsons in our backyard. With chairs positioned in a distanced circle in the sunshine or the shade, we got the chance to listen to the kids talk about online schooling, how they’ve adapted to participating in class via computer, and how much they missed their classmates.
Then, one day, grandson Coen brought along a story he’d written about, “Mr. Dancing Dandylion who travelled for 6 days, 4 hours, 10 minutes and 23 seconds” looking for friends. For a professional writer, happiness is a grandson who loves to write stories.
Coen’s young brother, Huxley, and I shared a routine joke through the summer of 2020. Whenever they made those backyard visits – whether for an hour or a few minutes – inevitably the boys would itch to get moving and do something more exciting than sit in a circle with their grandparents. Hux would say, “Can we go now?” to his mom.
“But you just got here,” I’d say with a whine.
“You always say that!” Hux would say with laugh.
It was like Carol Burnett’s tweak of the ear at the end of her TV show for her mom, or Edward R. Murrow’s “Good night and good luck,” signoff for his radio audience. Hux knew what to expect from me. I knew what to expect from him. And off they’d go until our next visit.
My COVID year moment with our youngest grandson, Tully, came with the first big snowfall a few weeks ago. I’d said the next time it snowed big fat, wet, packing snowflakes, I’d come to his backyard and we’d make snowmen. Well, not only did we make a snowman, but also a snowwoman, and a snow dog.
But the highlight of the entire visit came down to that moment of discovery. I took a snowball, packed it and began to roll it into an ever-expanding ball of snow. Then, without a second of hesitation, he rolled his own snowball into a bigger and bigger ball. “How’s that?” I asked.
“Wow,” was all he said.
That’s as good an antidote to the pandemic as I need.