My grandfather had this weirdest habit of going for a walk on summer nights. "There's a lot to learn from life," he would say. Sometimes he used to take me with him, but ever since I became a boy of five it had become a summer routine to go stargazing with grandpa. He was a man of art; he found beauty and meaning even in the most mundane of things. Time had started to take a toll on his hair but his zest for life remained unchanged. Grey hairs and flakey wrinkles had begun to appear around the corners of his eyes but nothing could extinguish the fire in them. Or so my father would say. He has great admiration for his father-in-law, my grandpa, ever since he gave a bid to his proposal to marry my mother in a massively macho way — The man put a knife to my father's belly and said, "Dare to leave her and you're dead meat."
Once during our midnight rendezvous I, in my innocence, asked him whether he would have actually killed my father had he dared to leave my mother. The old man laughed instead and jokingly said, "Sure." It was during that same night I had spotted my first comet. Mama taught Geography, hence we had piles of books on almost everything that has to do with the earth. On our initial days of stargazing I would take one or two with me in hopes of discovering the mysteries of the world above me. Here in Ireland, the sky was almost always clear and the absence of light pollution made it even easier for one to have a treat for the eyes. But I had never seen a comet before until then. My grandfather asked me to make a wish and I did. Though I can't recall what I had wished for, I distinctly remember the brightest of smiles on the face of grandpa when later the first ray of sun poked us from the horizon. "You know Joshua, life is night and day." He said. "There's gonna be soothing light sometimes, while the rest will be a cold, scary, isolating darkness. But dawn and dusk, that's balance."
These words from him stayed with me and eventually made its way onto his grave. "Day and night, that's life. Dawn and dusk, that's balance." — Peter Ackerman (1930-2014)
Nowadays, when I see the moonlight caress my face, I remember him. I remember our camp under the willow tree in out vast backyard. I remember his words, I remember the man he was, but nothing could paint a clear picture of him than the eternal beam of life in his old grey eyes.
By: Maheshwari C.S
II yr B.A. Communicative English
Pic courtesy: Google Images