I got an email from a friend that left me thinking about the on-the-spot wisdom I aspire to having myself, like she has, come my eventual day of grandmotherhood.
My cousin Doug, a Baby Boomer a bit older than me, told this tale at our 95-year-old grandfather’s funeral fourteen years ago: back in the day, he grew his hair wayyy down to here, as so many were doing during the Vietnam era.
His dad had a lot of his Army days still in him and couldn’t stand his son’s hippy-freak look. They fought over it. Constantly. Neither would budge. Our grandfather being in the US Senate, my uncle finally shipped his kid off to DC to be a page for Grandpa for the summer to get him out of his hair: let Dad handle the kid.
Doug loved it. It was clear, as he spoke to the gathered family all those years later, that the experience had left him with a lifelong closeness to our grandfather, whom he revered. But that summer, he kept waiting for the explosion that he so much expected–after all, that’s what his dad would do, and Grandpa was a conservative from a conservative State and here Doug was, visibly flouting that image while working in his Senate office and, in a sense, representing him every time he walked down any of the halls of Congress. Finally, near the end of his stint, he couldn’t stand it anymore and asked nervously, “Uh, Grandpa–what do you think of my hair?”
And our bald grandfather smiled sweetly and answered him, “I think you should enjoy it while you’ve got it!”
Doug, telling the tale in the eulogy, ran a hand over his now-shiny top and laughed, “As always, he was right!”