apellido determinado

"but when I knew him, he was just a little old man who loved to grow roses."

my father has always loved to grow roses.
a skill he learned from his grandfather, he nurtured them
like children, each differently coloured, tempered, but sweet and responsive.
he pruned them daily with a talent I have not inherited,
knowing how and when and where to snip
cutting in a way that, somehow, left the plant more whole.

he tells that when we moved from maine,
he and my mother drove past that little old house a few weeks later
and he was heartbroken to see bushes of roses lying by the side of the road,
ripped up and given for garbage.
"why wouldn't they have offered them to me?" he asked himself for days after.
I wondered what the big deal was, at the insightful age of 11.
They're just plants.

this love for roses is genetic.

while my father idolizes his grandfather, telling stories of his legendary laugh
and long portuguese pipe,
he remembers the sweet little old man,
standing in the yellowing photo with big ears that nearly stick out of the frame,
wrinkles abounding on his forehead,
rose bushes in the background.

why he was allowed to know this man, I will never understand.
as a father, he was cruel, with a portuguese temper to match his apellido
ruling his household with a gefilte fish on christmas
and disciplining with his fists.
he was something to be feared,
a man that battled through asbestosis everyday in underground tunnels
and until his death at 81,
everyone thought he'd been victorious,
never touched.

In fear, my grandfather choose engineering over medicine,
his brother, the army over life in a New Jersey factory.
My great-grandmother, a quarter century younger, defaulted to his wisdom
and worked in a factory, testing lightbulbs on a line, for 8 hours a day.
(Whether her choice was also influenced by fear,
we'll never know).

But when my father was born, this man who inspired fear had mellowed,
softening with age into the sweet little old man in the photo,
a man worthy of his grandson's emulation:
who trapped and released squirrels,
shoveled the snow off of the sidewalk,
and loved to grow roses.