May 12, 2014

Words of My Grandfather



          
  My grandfather was not an articulate man.

His phrasing, like his living, was rough-hewn and simple. He had an incredibly pleasant demeanor when speaking; but his normal mode of speech throughout his life was a gentle and indistinct muttering; nearly everything he said was said under his breath. Perhaps a third of the words he spoke throughout his life were understood only by himself and his dear wife, who asked him to repeat them.  

But he nevertheless told me nearly everything I needed to know.

I learned, first, from the simple sincerity of his silence—a silence which was most often a product of being too productive to talk. So many talk and mistake it for more. Their words  extend, exaggerate, or outrun their actions. Others act so that afterwards they can talk about it. I once heard someone say, “Don’t talk. Do. THEN talk.” Pop’s motto, I think, was closer to “Don’t talk. Do. Then: don’t talk.” He was as close to pure action as any man I’ve met. His mouth didn’t move much; but the rest of him rarely stayed still. He was the world’s least idle man.

To say that he was inarticulate is not to say Pop didn’t speak. He did. He built buildings and souls.

With respect to building in general: Pop had an extraordinary aura of practical competence. If you had a problem—cement work, plumbing, electrical—anything—Pop knew what to do and had the tools to do it. But his chosen professional medium for expression was not these—was, again, not words, but wood. He was an extraordinary carpenter. Countless buildings, motels, shops, restaurants, and homes—including this tremendous sanctuary in which we now sit—along with hundreds, if not thousands, of cabinets, shelves, book-cases—all were crafted by his burnt-tan, scarred-up, gentle artist’s hands. What he could say—the meanings he could shape— with these hands in wood was incredible. Every cut was clean, every angle precise, every corner plumb and true. And all was done with a remarkable deftness. He never once gave me a lecture on how to create, or put value into the world, or how to approach a problem. To see him work was the lesson--particularly his carpentry. With words there was stammering; with wood there was none. There are different sorts of artists. Some artists wear checkered shirts and drive trucks. We use the word ‘genius’ narrowly; but Pop was no less a genius in his chosen medium than any other maker of useable art.

One thing he taught was to build to last. If one were to face a tornado, and had a choice to ride it out in either a cemented basement or a Lloyd-built dog-house on the highest hill, those who knew how Pop built chose the doghouse every time. That thing wasn’t going anywhere.

Another thing he taught me is harder to explain—but is something about timing--or rather, living at the proper pace. On the job he was a whirlwind of motion—but never in a bluster or hurry. He was relentless, but never careless; he neither rested nor rushed. My memories of him nailing roof with the rest of us—tan, wirey, rock-steady at 70 + years-of-age—are recorded elsewhere. But his unusual mood of relaxed relentlessness made a profound impression on me. It was not a lesson about how to do anything; it was a lesson about how to do everything. And the way he built buildings with me helped to build me. To this day I call to mind his steady focus upon the task before him, however simple or apparently ignoble it might seem, in order to smile off my own procrastinations. What I think was missing in him, so common in other men (and myself), was hesitation. He was actually bad at hesitating. There was even no hesitation when it came time to relax. He could drop the job that had consumed him all morning as easily as one unhitches and drops one’s tool belt when the shift-whistle blows. His relaxing was decisive—took no more than an instant. His ability to sleep the instant he stopped moving –a skill bordering on narcolepsy— was legendary. We kids, after being put to bed, used to listen and root for him as he and Nana prayed aloud in the next room before sleeping. We took bets on how many times he would drift off in mid-supplication to the Almighty. He would inevitably, and more than once, nod off in the Presence--and Nana would have to prod him awake and back to his spiritual task, whereupon he would re-start the prayer—remarkably, with the correct next family member or missionary. His struggles to maintain consciousness in church were heroic also, however excellent the sermon. I won’t, even here and now, claim he won that good fight very often. But every Sunday, by God, he fought it.

Pop showed me the difference between being meek and a milquetoast. I’ve just said he didn’t hesitate—and this includes matters of his own personal safety. More than once he stepped on sheeting laid carelessly on a roof and ‘surfed’ his way through air to the ground. But he was never hurt by the fall, in part, I suspect, because he wouldn’t tense up when falling. There was no panic in him. It just wasn't there, even when it should have been--e.g. the casual indifference with which he dragged a corded saw, stepping from truss to truss two or three stories up, was appalling to watch. My other grandfather, long since passed, recalls Pop, furious, firing a very large angry man for incompetence, with a just but sharp and direct reaming out (Pop could not abide slovenly work. It was, to he and Nana, something very near Original Sin). I was, too, a bit of a pill at times. I could give Pop reason to be angry; and he’d sputter a bit, and bring me up short. His anger, coming from such a light-hearted man, carried more weight than the tirades of other men. When his temper was up, he had, in the most literal sense, lost his natural temper. But anger did not well up from him, or sink in to him. It passed over him quickly; and I never saw him sin in anger.

My Papa was a lover in the broadest sense.
He loved one woman for 70 years, as fully as a man can.
As one might suspect, he and Nana’s conversations were not something to put on radio. Their talk proceeded almost entirely via an easy dance of slight nods and a few fairly predictable words. Moreover, Pop was, after years crouched over every imaginable power tool, eventually as deaf as he was quiet. But he and Nana had reached that understanding that feels no need to hire out talk to secure itself; they reveled in the mere presence of one another, and amplified one another’s shared warmth and mutual lightness of heart. They also invited into this shared warmth and light their children, their grandchildren, and their extended family. I cannot describe to you what it is like to have someone so thoroughly enjoy your presence, and to be able, without words, to let you know that you are the source of their enjoyment. But Nana and Papa were experts in this rare and spiritual skill. Having this privileged experience of being enjoyed changed—and continues to change— everything after. If everyone had it for an hour, everything would be different.

 I also want to speak about a great secret of Pop’s influence—evident in—even consisting of—a light step, a ceaseless good humor, a quick wink and laugh. He acknowledged everyone he met with a nod, given in this way. This nod was Pop’s inviting them into his ease of soul—to enjoy it with him; and even those who could not enjoy it themselves loved him for showing them its possibility. This easy enjoyment he offered to everyone—the churchman, the clerk, the building inspector, the muscle-bound con with snake tattoos running up his neck outside the grocery store. There was, in his practice of acknowledging all with his near-wink-and-nod, a glimpse of a simple, conspiratorial solidarity. It conveyed…something---something too profound and morally important for further instruction or explanation. And this, too, left me understanding something that could have been taught to me in no other way. 

Pop built younger souls, too, from the ground up, through a similar kind of playfulness. Pop was playful. Children universally adored him. He was, it is fair to say, a bit of a child himself. He never lost his wonder with the world. Though he had a family of four by age 21, I knew him only as an ‘older’ man. But he delighted in novelty, and never droned on about how good everything used to be and how bad it is now. I don't think he ever believed this. What he wanted to know each morning of his life was “What’s next?” He was a child, too, with respect to his expectations that others would be honorable. A bad business experience late in life stunned him for just this reason. I tried to explain once how this person might find pleasure in contentions and resentments; I got nowhere. He’d never done it and didn’t get it. Pop was impulsive. Once, well into his sixties, he hopped on my skateboard and took off down the driveway, to the amazement and consternation of all. In his late seventies, after seeing his great-grandchildren boogey-boarding, he immediately walked up the street and bought himself his own board and a set of swim fins. And he was always buying gadgets, for health, work, and home. Nana made noises to stop him; but, despite his somewhat wild and optimistic shopping habits, she secretly loved him for his boundless curiosity and deep delight in the new.

Papa was incredibly generous. One could not out-give him. The time he was willing to spend upon family was limitless. To get the check at a restaurant required a strategy.

He was joyful. I think this is what I cannot stop saying in different ways. He was no dour lover of humanity. Pop loved particular people. And his joy, and ability to enjoy you, was his first gift. 

His ability to elevate the hearts of others in this way, I think, derived from another quality: humility. His light-heartedness was, perhaps, an unparalleled ability to take himself lightly. Pop simply did not think much of himself—by which I mean: he did not give himself a great deal of thought. He didn’t degrade or discount his own worth; it simply wasn’t on his mind. In company he would instead shine the light of his attentions upon others—would somehow bend the light away from himself, making him at once the simplest and most solid man I knew, yet also somewhat mysterious and hard to see. If this profile fails to capture him, it is because his humility and lightness of being makes him less visible. And this odd invisibility—a product of his humility—is another compliment I would give to his character, which he would never have thought to give himself.

All this is not to say Pop did not have an inner life. There was, at the core of Pop, a very basic faith in Jesus. Though he respected intellectual innovation and labor (as he did every other sort of work), he could not, I suspect, have defended this belief in argument. An ‘intellectual’ might suppose this to show his benighted-ness and backward thinking. But this just shows how confused such an intellectual would be. In any attempt to argue Pop out of his faith, the joke would have been on the arguer. The very attempt would be a comic mis-conception of the life-richness, nature, and depth of Pop’s belief. His belief wasn’t to be proved, then lived. Rather, Pop’s life was the articulation or ‘proof’ of this very belief. He did not have decisive 'evidence of things hoped for’; he gave it by being that very evidence, and by inspiring that hope. He had no great and crushing exhibits or inferences to point to in support of his position; but those who needed evidence could, to support their own position, always point to Pop, as a practical proof of Christian fealty.  For Pop saw—far sooner than his slower, over-educated grandson—that it is not points or propositions but souls that are to be proved. St. Francis says somewhere, “Preach the Gospel. If necessary, use words.” Papa did not speak many words about God; he simply lived as a Christian in the most literal sense—a ‘little Christ’—and so as a word incarnate. His look, his love, his life, his limitless enjoyment and everyday gratitude, whispered to everyone who met him of something deep, secure, and indescribably Good. To add arguments to this may not be always misguided. But unlike so many who claim the same religion, Pop never lost sight of the fact that, whatever the results of language and controversies, life is the final word.

                                                            ***

Papa was profoundly healthy most of his life, despite an incredible workload from childhood on. Just this past Christmas he was putting his brown and knarled hands to use, building for family and church. He was hiking in Arizona. Dancing with great-grand-daughters in New Mexico. In our weekly conversations, he was telling me of his new ventures in health food, and how he was getting on.

Sickness struck suddenly. In a matter of weeks, the irrepressible Pop went from a life of enjoyment, interaction, independence, and accomplishment, to a simple, single daily task: FOREBEAR. Yet he did this, too, with complaint-less aplomb, charming all with his kindness and love, beaming out from beneath the wires and tubes and daily indignities. Once in perpetual motion he could no longer move. And though not a speaker, he could no longer speak—a trach tube now preventing his precious, gentle mumblings. I told his caretakers at the hospital, “He doesn’t look like much now. But this man is a wounded king. Take care of him!” 

And he was. Everyone who knew him feels this. Knows this—felt in his easy, open confidence a powerful natural superiority that would never insist on itself. If the idea of royalty still means anything important, it is the last of a certain royal line who has died.

Yet I am and will always be heartened by considering him, and his quiet, everyday king-liness. Pop lived every second with such vigor, fullness, and grace. He is one of the few men who seems to have somehow got nearly all the big things right. To search his life is to find no conceivable cause for regret. He reserved nothing; he kept nothing; shirked no work; broke no faith, buried no talent; withheld no affection. For most of us, living this way for a week is a miracle. Pop did it for 93 years.
    
                                                            ****

  Relative to all Pop’s natural greatness, this is a small gathering. The passing of the slightest actor or politician or singer will garner audiences and accolades for weeks. Yet in fifty years others will still be sitting, watching, worshiping, and living in the work of Lloyd McKean's weathered hands. And those of us who knew him will, in part, still have been built by him, and go on being built up by him. How many lead such constructive lives? How many leave such deep marks? But Pop would have laughed off any worries about recognition. He was, in his heart, a man of work and love, free from worry, without envy—a carpenter, king, and Christian who, having spoken little, had nonetheless early in life chosen the mediums in which he could best speak, and, by the end of life, through them said everything he had to say.

            The wisest man could ask no more of Fate
            Than to be simple, modest, manly, true
            Safe from the Many, honoured by the Few
            To count as naught in World or Church or State
            But rather, inwardly, in secret, to be great.

I have loved this man.
Thank you for coming.


            -Delivered at service, 5 August 2013