“Anybody can wear a suit,” he told me once while tightening the hinges on his back gate. “Try keeping the world running in the dark and see who still thinks they’re above you.”
When I was a kid and the rest of my family found ways to make me feel oversized, intense, or not quite properly formed for the life they preferred, Grandpa never tried to sand anything down. He taught me how to use tools correctly, how to read grain in wood, how to change a tire, how to look a man in the eye without asking permission for space. He let silence exist between us without filling it with correction.
The memory box I went back for that morning had been his.