Grandpa,

I don’t remember a single word you ever said to me. I remember your face…the way you smelled like pipe smoke, and the way your hands were always stained with ink. That is all… Yet I always wanted to be like you. You were always so dignified and quirky in my eyes. I loved how mom told me stories about watching you write. She says she could always tell when you were writing. Sometimes it would be in the middle of a conversation. She said you would just stop and twirl you cigarette… the hand rolled kind… round and round in your fingers as you stared into the distance. Mom would tell me how you loved red wine and sea food, and how you would spend all day at your type writer and leave with only a sentence. She told me of all the times you would walk with her through the red woods and the advice you gave her. The way you called her your little monkey face. I always wanted to be monkey face two… as silly as that sounds. I wanted to be a part of your life. So I decided to be a writer. I was 7 and I got a gold star on a silly little handmade book I made about horses. My mom said writing ran in our blood as did good wine, and a good taste in art. She also said we were gypsies. So I was going to be a traveling gypsy writer, who drank red wine, and trained horses. The horses came with the story of course. I remember writing you letter after letter and you never responded. Then you died… I feel like I missed meeting an incredible man. Sure you were a horrible dad and a worse husband. You were never a perfect person but who is? You were a great artist. A tortured soul who had a story to be told. A story that got lost somewhere in your push for fame… I wonder who you would have become if you hadn’t gone to LA. If you hadn’t left mom and grandma and Pattie, and Bart and Gayle… I wonder what it would have been like if I could have been around you as an older person. I wonder what it would be like if I knew you now? But wondering goes nowhere…. The point is I love you. I miss you. And I hope life is good wherever you are.

Love and mountains,

Riley