Grandpa, first part

Sadie has a running thread of conversation these days about her "grandpa's". They tell her things. "Grandpa told me ..." You add the rest.

They are wonderful souls, her grandpas. They tell her they love her. They tell her about nature. About television and fast cars. 

Thing is, she has never met her grandpas.

Tiffany's father, Thom House, and mine, Thurman Powell, are gone from this world, except in their genes which flow into this little girl. 

Which get's me to this photo. His genes reside somewhere in Sadie and Rowan, my 14-year-old. That's Oliver Powell, all of his thin, tall self in front of his house in Cumberland, N.C. My grandpa.

I didn't know him well. I was the grandson living over the Atlantic in Europe. My times with him were short on visits to North Carolina. 

He worked in the nearby cotton mill. The house was in a mill village. I remember the house not having much furniture or "things." I remember him laughing, a lot. He died in the early '70s and is in a graveyard with plenty of the Cumberland County Powells. His father, my great grandfather. His uncle, Benjamin, who fought in World War I, according to his gravestone. His wife, Cora Todd Powell, my grandmother.

 I wish I had known him. I can't help but ask myself what he would think of me and his great-granddaughters. Our lives are so different from his.

Oh, the things he could share, my grandpa.