What makes us who we are?
A portrait of one man's life
Hi there,
My dearest asked me to write a piece about his Grandad and how he is ageing. It’s become clearer more recently the effect that age is having on him, and so, after lots of journaling, thinking and fretting, I wrote this.
Honestly, it hurt my heart to write it and explore the topic. So I hope that I have managed to put that emotion into my words.
(I’d also like to point out now that I talk about shooting and hunting - this isn’t a piece in support or not of any of those activities. I write what I know, what I see and what I feel.)
Enjoy!
K x
In the house, all about, there is screaming. The youngest child is being dangled upside down by my dearest, to her squeals of absolute delight and mild protest. The eldest is laughing and yelling for everyone else to come and see, egging the perpetrator on to keep her there a little longer.
It’s Easter weekend, and my family-by-choice has descended on the grandparent’s house for food and the all-important Easter egg hunt. And it’s pandemonium. Between the adults shouting across the kitchen, and the little cousins thoroughly enjoying life, I struggled to hear Grandma speak.
In the corner, sat silently in a world all his own, staring out of the window at the bird feeders and nesting boxes, at the long-tail tits and sparrows dancing, at the robins and the coal tits fluttering, was Grandad. His fingers, gnarled with use and history, curled around the plush arm of the chair (which is shared only and exclusively with his dog), his face calm and blank in the chaos, watching the peaceful life of birds outside of his window.
Grandad loved to shoot and he loved what I would classify as country sports (i.e. shooting, hunting, and probably others). He is rarely seen without a traditional check shirt and has exclusively owned working dogs (terriers, spaniels, labradors). He knows the business of every farm and farmer in the area and knows how to swiftly strip a rabbit ready to eat.
He bought his first gun at around 11, taking it home on the bus (this was in the 40’s, mind). The Luftwaffe were bombarding nearby Bristol around the time he first started shooting; he was given an allowance of 25 cartridges a week and, with those, he hunted dinner for the family table, namely rabbits. He always aimed to bring home 26...
He’s been shooting ever since.
Until the day the guns had to be taken away, as time, and age, marched ever on.
This house, as with all houses in which people have lived for decades, is littered with memories and clues about the identities of the people living here.
School photos of grandchildren and, now, great-grandchildren sit on Welsh dressers between the saucers, on a dark wooden sideboard in the lounge, or stuck into the doorframe of the kitchen with postcards and birthday cards.
The kitchen is always stifling from the wood-burning oven. On the walls, there are faded photos of the old horse and its rider flying over fences, and one of Grandad shooting, the barrel pointed high in the air. Above, near the ceiling and away from little hands, sits an old, side lock shotgun, which looks rather more like a musket. In the lounge, the walls are covered in old drawings and sketches of old family dogs, spaniels and terriers and labradors.
What you won’t see so easily are the other things, the other clues. The khukuri1 tucked away on top of a kitchen cabinet. The gun cabinet hidden in a cupboard with elegantly carved shotguns. Outside, the Land Rover Defender that somehow keeps going, the vegetable patch with the creepy ‘scarecrow’ (read: a plastic shop window dummy’s head), the orchard sheltering the shed, the pond with the carp and the frogs meticulously cared for and watched, the other shed with the wood stove and the hooks and a hokey wooden stool.
These things are never quite the whole story.
Lines for Winter by Mark Strand Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself— inside the dome of dark or under the cracking white of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play as you keep going. And you will be able for once to lie down under the small fire of winter stars. And if it happens that you cannot go on or turn back and you find yourself where you will be at the end, tell yourself in that final flowing of cold through your limbs that you love what you are.
He stood at the top of the small rise in the garden and whistled a long, wavering tone. Two grey-feathered guinea fowl scurried out of the garden towards him, appearing in a whirl and slowing as they neared. Bigger than expected, I marvelled at the beauty of their feathery coats, grey but strangely coloured.
We followed Grandad to the field, down past the vegetable patch with runner beans growing, towards a wooden crate sat among the long grass. As we neared, I saw her, sitting on the grass, her tiny feathered chest heaving, her bright yellow eye staring at me. Right into my soul.
A sparrow hawk had been caught in one of Grandad’s traps. She was the fiercest, most wild thing and I could have reached out through the chicken wire to touch her. She jumped and beat the cage with her wings, furious, her claws grabbing the wires and squeezing the life from them. There was a moment of stillness, a moment to paint her image into my memory, to capture how well-made a predator she was.
Then Grandad was putting his fingers far too close for my liking, folding back part of the homemade trap, and she out and gone in a burst of speed and life and fury to hunt and live and be fierce. Her eyes stayed with me.
Time is not as rigid as we sometimes think.
In our youth, time goes too slowly. We yearn to be an adult, to fit in with that gang of cool kids, to be tall enough for that rollercoaster. We want to drink, to drive (not in that order), to make our own decisions because our parents don’t know what’s best for us.
By middle age, it seems to go too fast. Racing by, a blur of colours, memories and snatches of conversations we half-remember. Oh my goodness, it’s already April we say, wondering to ourselves where all that time went, wondering at how we’ve squandered it.
The final stage, it seems, is for time to blend, grow stretchy and infinite, cycling day after day through activities that don’t vary. If we’re not careful, we can tumble into monotony, each day looking the same, with the same cuppa over the same newspaper, with the same sort of sensational headlines, watching the same TV programmes at the same time, and drifting, plodding, trudging on to the inevitable, quiet end.
What is it that we call identity? Is it your name? Your date of birth? Your nationality? Is it your hair colour, eye colour, skin colour? Is it your face shape, your teeth, your hair? Maybe it’s the way you laugh just so at jokes? Or the knowing look in your eye when you’re up to no good? It’s the way you watch the birds, entranced in their little lives As they flurry and bicker and dance. Or the way you walk up the slope through the orchard Hands clasped behind you, head bowed. Perhaps it’s how you laugh at your great-grandchildren As they scurry and hunt for chocolate eggs Among the acers, and the apple trees, around the pond. But it’s gotten too cold in the winter For you to stand out in the rain with the dogs. Your bones are too tired to roam over the hills Or chop all the wood or fix the truck. The gun cabinet stands empty And the fields around grow still. Your days become the endless plod. It’s still you, in your walk and your laugh and your smile. But is it really? What is this thing that we call identity?
This piece was painful and hard to write. When my dearest gave me the prompt, I wanted to do his Grandad justice. To talk about the man he is and was, and not just the fact he’s getting old.
I journaled and wrote notes and notes, trying to get to what I wanted to say, trying to work out what I felt about it all. Poetry helped me immensely here. The piece by Mark Strand was key, and another that I haven’t included here is called Oh by Robert Creeley. When I felt a sucker punch in my heart while scribbling an idea, I knew I was there, that I had found the core of it, the deep truth.
From there, I started to explore identity and age. When we took Grandad’s guns from him, it felt a little like we weren’t just taking an instrument or a tool, but we were taking a part of who he is away. Of course, it’s not just the guns, it’s all the other things, but they were certainly a part of him. If someone took away my ability to write and craft sentences, would I feel less me? Resoundingly, painfully, yes.
I asked my dearest to describe an image of his grandfather. If we could commission a portrait of him, what would it be? Grandad sitting on a hokey wooden stool, shotgun across his lap, a terrier sat next to him, the wood stove roaring behind him, and pheasants hanging on the wall. (Incidentally, there’d also have to be a Land Rover Defender somewhere in there too.)
All in all, I sincerely hope that this piece has done what I hoped - look at identity, what makes us who we are, what happens when we age, and also celebrate the man my dearest calls Grandad who has, by all accounts, lived a full, colourful life, with his dogs, his birds, his guns and his vehicles.
I hope you enjoyed this piece. If you did, I’d love to hear why in the comments!
It would also be amazing if you shared it! A restack is awesome, or send it to someone you think would enjoy it too :)
If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy these other pieces:
Learning to see
Hi there, I’m coming to your inbox a little later than I usually would. It works better, I think, to publish on a Monday, but we’ll see how it goes. A week ago, my other half (really should think of a decent public name for him - one he’ll accept…) decided to give me some writing prompts. I thought why the heck not. Then he gave me the prompts and I reg…
Writing: My Unexpected Medicine
Hello on this bright, beautiful day. The clouds have clustered around the foot of the mountain, a little bit like snow. The snow is almost entirely gone from the tops though; the clouds are drifting off into the vales. It feels a little more like spring.
I’m taking part in the Essay Club run by . This is essay 1/24 to be published by 31st Jan 2025.
As far as l know, nobody has done a portrait of me in paint or words. Maybe what my family see in me is not what l see, they will all have their own perceptions. They outwardly show me love, but how they see me or what they know of my past, l know not.
Have l faded into the manotony of old age, doing much the same things each day with odd bursts of activity? Is what l do important to my family or do they see it as an excentricity? Do they know why l am who l am, what experiences formed me and have l passed on a little of me to them?
Your article as always made me think. How do l see myself? How different is that to the perceptions of my family and are their perceptions governed by how close our relationship is?
I am old, but fairly content. The things in my life, tangible items such as my pace stick, my book collection, the way that l dress, my shiny shoes, all of these things help to define me l suppose, but what will be their lasting memory of me?
In the harshness of reality, does it really matter? I'd like to think so, and l hope that memory treats me kindly.
Grandads are special people. We are a constant pillar in the family, and we see more than we say, but we are blessed with experiences earned in happy and sad times which we use to our advantage and to remain relevant. I never met mine, but the photos of him prove that he still holds influence as it appears that this little old acorn hasn't fallen far from the tree. A soldier, shiny shoes, and just maybe a major influence in the family.
Thanks Karen, another thought provoking piece xx