my_other_grandfather releaseofwarmth I say "other" he's "also" my grandfather, as much as my_grandfather is, it's not meant to be dismissive of him. it's just that he was practically never in my life. I think? or was he. is he? genetics are a funny thing. I don't believe behavior and personality is all just a product of environment and upbringing and life experiences. I do think there are things inherited through genetics / genealogy / bloodline which live within you and stick with you that carry down from your previous generation, with or without having a direct relationship with your ancestors. to one person that belief might seem as far-fetched as the belief in an omnipresent benevolent being who observes your every move with condescending judgment, tallying up your good and bad deeds to determine whether enough a present shows up under your tree, or you burn_in_hell for all eternity. to another person it might seem very plausible, based on not just coincidences and the similarity of one's circumstances to their relatives, but on observable consistent patterns of behavior. I only have my opinion. I'm not trying to persuade anyone. and what I'm ultimately saying is that I_don't_know whether my_other_grandfather exists in me or if I'm just a completely separate bowl of soup just modeled after him and others, via my_parents. but this theoretical bullshit has so run_its_course and it's about time I told actually told you about what I know about a man I never knew. 240318 ... warmthofrelease I only have pieces. mostly what my mom has told me. she doesn't talk about him much unless prompted, and I don't ask about him often. but she loved him to pieces. and he loved her too. from what I'm told he was a completely loving man. the opposite of his wife. we're not talking about abuelita he was in the american military. I forget what rank or even what military branch. he was a prisoner_of_war in the korean_war early 1950s. the north koreans bore a hole into the side of a mountain. and I don't mean a tunnel, I mean a hole. something barely big enough for you to crawl into. it went about a mile and a half deep into the mountainside. human american prisoners of war resided in this hole. my_other_grandfather was one of them. conditions were certainly not ideal. dysentery, hypothermia, starvation, not to mention any wounds one might have sustained in battle which were receiving no medical attention whatsoever by anyone outside the hole. and if someone died, which you might imagine was often, the corpse had to be passed all the way down the line from person to person until it was out of the hole. he was in there for over a year. they tell me he lived his life with an immense sense of gratitude and benevolence. he kept to himself, he liked to go to the racetrack and bet small change on the ponies. he had an enormous orchard where he grew everything from pecan trees to peach trees, cherry trees and apple trees, along with your customary truckloads of tomatoes and cabbages, carrots and onions, herbs and flowers, there was nothing he wasn't interested in growing. I didn't get that green_thumb. I can barely keep a succulent alive. I assume that is one of those things he would've had to teach me in person. he died on memorial_day which was, of course, his favorite holiday. I was about 18 months old at the time. many years before he died or I was born his farmland got bought out by the state. they flooded the land, turned it into a manmade lake. probably 50,000 boats or more go out on that lake every year. good for them I guess. I do have this strange peace about me. this kindness and this grace that never seems to come out much. I could rattle off a hundred hypotheses about why it's the secretest part of me, but when I look around and see my father and his family, my mother and her family, I only have one guess as to where I might be getting it from. or, well, two guesses. it could just be nothing. 240318 ... epitome of incomprehensibility About personality traits being inherited, my Intro to Psych teacher would agree: he kept saying, "It's not nature OR nurture, it's nature AND nurture." Meaning people's psychologies are formed by both. ... As for grandfathers, I also have my "other" one who died before I was born. Dad's dad. Father's father. Small-town American farmer whose male child got education after education, swapped denomination and nation, acquired citification. Even so, a photo tells me he looked a lot like Dad: small roundish face with a pointy nose, just brown eyes instead of blue. So I picture him talking like my father, but with a more pronounced Maine accent. Donald, funny name to me. Older photos, black_and_white. An old grey car that wasn't grey in real life. 240319 ... e_o_i Eh, Aunt Sarah got her share of education too. Remind(s) me to write about intro_to_psych. 241213 what's it to you? who go blather from