Sarx

My Grandfather - Ken Richardson - raised me from the time I was one until I was six. In August of 1970 I went to live with my Mom, newly remarried. None of us suspected that she was married to a child abuser who, on October 31 of that year, at about 7:30 pm, threw a glass bowl full of candy at my face… I remember decades in that house. Centuries. The marriage only lasted from July to October. We were out of there the next morning: into a newly rented house, filled with all our stuff. Mom married again, five years later, to the man I have called “Dad” for the last 30 odd years. But my Grandfather was, really, my father: it was his name I took, after all, on 11 September 2000, when the Superior Court in San Francisco granted my request for a name change. Richardson is the name of my father.

And tonight some memories stick with me, coming to me out of the darkness of time and making me weepy as I watched a video of Frederick Buechner, speaking at the Trinity Institute in 1990.

I must have been 2 or 3 when I first walked up to the corner from the front porch of our trailer at the corner of Washington and Jefferson. I toddled across the yard to Mr and Mrs Grey’s house and across their front lawn, into the imposing shadow of the Presbyterian Church and all the way to the corner of Hancock and Jefferson. It’s not a long walk, only about 300′. And I was standing on the curb stone. Looking into traffic. I don’t think I intended to go any further: but you never know about kids.

Suddenly a car swooped out of the opposite lane towards me. It was my grandfather who yelled at me from the driver’s seat. And he turned the corner and I knew something was wrong. I ran home - as fast as my little legs could carry me. And Grandpa yelled at me for straying so far from home. I have a memory of him reaching for the forsythia switch that stayed over the front door for wayward children. It is the only time I ever remember him using it. Of my Grandmother I remember other such events, but my Grandpa only ever needed to use it once - and I cried, I remember sitting my my grandma’s lap crying as Grandpa put the switch away, up on its nail over the door.

I had strayed too far from home…

Some lessons we learn. Some we forget. And 18 years later I clearly forgot. It was a year after my Grandmother had died. Nearly to the day. October of 1985, Grandpa got married to the widow lady that lived next door. They drove several hours to do so, one of the last road trips they would ever take, out into the mountains of north Georgia. I was there, living in Atlanta at the time. I was the only member of my family to be anywhere near the area. Mom called from New York and asked me to get in touch with Grandpa and offer to stand with him at his wedding.

She had to cajole me. Grandpa and I hadn’t spoken more than briefly in the preceding year or two. And prior to that our relationship had been strained - as between a teenager and a parent. But since I had come out as a gay man Grandpa had really wanted nothing to do with me. Occasionally I’d get a card at Christmas or my birthday. That was pretty much it. To be honest, the simmering hostility went two ways: what child-turned-adult likes to be told he’s strayed? What child-turned-adult wants to imagine there is anything his elders can still teach him? So I wasn’t exactly more than civil in my calls - with anyone, really. It took four or five years before my parents and I were all on track again. Grandpa and I were not so lucky.

So now, at Grandpa’s wedding, I asked him if I could meet him in Dahlonega. Before he answered in the negative, he asked if I was still gay. I was at work at the time: two bartenders and a couple of waitresses standing around me to offer support. And they knew what had happened before I even said it, kinda hunched over in my chair.

I had strayed too far from home…

Grandpa’s marriage to the neighbour widow lady took place in private and it began a near 20 year separation. The cards stopped. The calls stopped. When they took a railroad trip, stopping in Oakland, CA, they didn’t want to meet me, even though they were only 20 mins away from my life in SF (at the time).

Then the inevitable happened and Grandpa took sick. And every Thanksgiving and every Christmas Mom announced it was the last time.

And finally, sitting one night with Donald and Leesy and Zara at St Gregory’s, I heard my friends say - clearly - don’t let it end this way. They assured me I’d still have family in San Francisco.

So, loved, I got on a plane and I went home. Terrified.

Grandpa lived four more years - a total of five Thanksgivings and four Christmases. I made it home for all of them. And one year I came home with a new present: his last name. And it was Grandpa who got everyone in the family to stop calling me Billy and start calling me Huw. And it was Grandpa who said it was a wonderful last name and he was so thankful to have it live on after him (he had no sons…)

And that last Thanksgiving before he died (and we all knew it this time) it was Grandpa who, laying in bed, took me in his arms and blessed me, whispering into my ear, “live a good life”. And I was crying as Mom and I got into the car. When Mom called me to tell me he had gone and I needed to come home, I sat, alone in my bedroom, and mourned.

I preached at my Grandmother’s funeral in 1984 and, at his request, I sang at Grandpa’s in 2002. I still have my Mom, and my Dad, of course - and part of me lives in fear of when they will be taken from me - but my Grandparents raised me those first six years. A child-turned-Adult may not realise it but one day the Adult-turns-orphan and wishes that time could go backwards. I’m so thankful he caught me that day on the curb. I’m sure I wasn’t planning on going further: but you never know about kids.