Papa

"Your grandmother and I lived in a watchtower the first summer we were married, you know. I got a job in Washington state in forest protection to live up there and watch for fires. We didn't have any electricity or running water and our bathroom was a outhouse. There was a cold stream about a quarter mile from our tower and that's where we kept our food, in a wooden box you just put in the water and weighed down with rocks. We kept our butter and milk and soda pop in there."

I sat silently, hanging on to every word. I love his voice, I love his stories. So many times I have sat and listened to him tell the same story. Sometimes he would ask if I had heard the story he was telling before, most of the time I had, but he will never know that, I just want to hear it again, I just want to hear him tell it at least one more time.

"One time your Nanny went to the stream to go get us some soda pop. She was just a little way off when she saw tire tracks leading right up to where our box was. Well she started running and when she got there she found that all the food had been stolen right out of it. She just laid right down there and cried, remember she was just 17."

He laughed and his eyes crinkled at the memory, of the first summer with my grandma as newlyweds.

"I only got to go to town twice that first summer. I remember the first time I went all I wanted was a barber haircut and an ice cream. So the first thing I did when I got to town was get that ice cream."

"Remember your Papa was only 19 at the time," Mom chimed in.

"Yep, I surely was," Papa went quiet, lost in thought and memory.

I sat and watched him, he looked so much older than even just a few days ago when I had seen him last. I guess the stress of the past few weeks on top of sleepless nights due to worry had caught up with him. It broke my heart. This was my Papa, he was supposed to live forever.

"I made your grandma a bathing suit that year, out of a terry cloth towel. Well, she and I both made it together."

"What did you do? Wrap it around like a diaper?" Mom asked.

Papa laughed, "No, I actually made a bikini!"

We all started laughing. My grandparents are two of the happiest married people I have ever known.

"One night we were walking back up the mountain from a friends house after dinner. It gets cold, even in the summer, on the mountain at night, and it was a half mile walk back to the tower. Your grandma was wearing shorts and she started to get cold. I was wearing blue jeans with my .22 revolver on a gun belt. I stopped on took off my blue jeans and gave them to your grandma to wear. I put my gun belt back on over my underwear and told her, 'I feel naked without my gun.'"