The Servant Heart

In loving memory of David Thomas Siems

1932-2015

“Grandpa,” I said one morning coming down the stairs, “Come on, we’re playing hooky today.”
            He raised his eyebrows, eyes wide, forehead crinkled; it was his classic look, the Dave Siems look.
            “Where we going?”
            “On a date, go get your jacket and cap, I’m paying.”
            He rubbed his palms together eagerly. It was easy to mistake him for a simple man, a rum raisin kind of guy. Slippers and flannel, he liked oatmeal every morning; his coffee black, ate whatever was given, and drank his lagers German and dark.  He was careful with his words too and didn’t say much unless he felt the need. Most of the time we had conversations from across the room with our eyebrows alone.  

Growing up, Grandpa to me had always been the fix-it man driving around in his tractor down to the lake. Lazy days at the dock his feet kicked up on a chair in the shade, straw hat tilted over his face.  It was during the summers he’d taught me how to catch and filet fish, shoot a gun, drive the tractor in his lap, and build fires while the winters were full of chopping down trees, cutting firewood, shoveling snow, and building more fires. The shed was his domain and to us grandkids almost sacred. It smelled of petroleum soaked gravel and dirt cluttered with all sorts of tools and gizmos most of which only he alone knew how to handle or where they went. By the end of the day, he’d sit in his chair munching away on a snack and watch the news till dinner, bless the food, and then watch a movie. That was grandpa.
            There was a box of photographs in Grandma’s sewing closet full of black and whites. I shuffled through them one day seeing faces I didn’t know, but knew that somehow they had shaped my grandparents, parents, and my history. I stopped at a picture of a young, handsome man in uniform, I knew it was Grandpa but I couldn’t stop from thinking—who is this man? It couldn’t be…—but it was.

He slapped his knees. “Well alright then, let’s go!” Gripping the chair he sat in every morning to read the newspaper, with shaky hands he pushed his creaky self up and shuffled over to the closet. He fumbled for a handkerchief in his pocket and blew hard.

  I remembered those hands being strong and steady when I was a kid running around the Texas hill country. They’d hammer in nails with precision and deadly force as he straddled the uppermost half of a swing-set he and my dad were constructing for us youngsters.  I wasn’t too sure back then what exactly an engineer was, but I knew that he was one. I wasn’t too sure what GM was either, but I knew that his hands helped build America and that that was something to be proud of.

I did not know where we were going, except that our stomachs would know when we got there. We got in the car, and both buckled up, him giving a thumbs up when the seat belt was secure. We talked about the weather, about the Russians (or so he thought them to be) who played pool at the senior center, and about the Koran he’d found on a bookshelf. He thought it might be helpful for my partner currently deployed in Syria. He checked his front pocket for the pen and bits of paper always sticking out of it. With one hand he adjusted his glasses, the other he held the paper out to read.

Those hands touched lives overseas. I’d seen them in action, holding up eye charts, clapping a shoulder in prayer, shifting through bags of eye glasses. You’d never know by looking at him that he’d traveled round the world over and over again in the service of God. I was privileged enough to go on a couple of those trips, but I will never forget the last mission I joined in on to Tanzania. The three of us, Pat, Dave, and I shared a room together. I’d never spent that long in that close of space with them before and was delighted to watch them fussing at each other till their fussing turned on me. I had busted my toe on a rock. Grandpa wagged his finger at me for not packing close toed shoes when they were emphasized on the packing list—something I laugh at now that I live in Africa and all I wear are flip flops that cost less than a buck. Closed toed shoes are a joke in village. After our work at the eyeglass clinic the safari adventure began.
            Racing along in prime off-road grade land rovers, he—the car safety guy—was the first to stand up and poke his head out the pop top roof. “Dani, get up here!” he called. I was more than happy to join him. “Look there! Do you see it?—Will you look at that!” He pointed out the animals he saw making sure I saw them too and didn’t miss a thing. I’m pretty sure he was as giddy as I was to see the lion’s pride leader, in all his regal glory, standing on a rock, mane blowing in the wind surveying the kingdom like something out of Lion King.  
            We spent the night camping in tents on the rim of the Ngoro Ngoro crater. Mist settled over the zebras grazing next to our camp site as the sun began to rise and people stirred from their tents.
            “Pat,” he said climbing out of his tent with creaky joints, “I’m thinking this is our last trip.” She just set her lips and frowned.  Her hands rubbing her lower back, I could tell she was reluctant to agree.

Our stomachs hit upon a bakery—God’s gift to taste buds—that served soup and sandwiches as an added bonus. Both our eyes wandered over the menu but stood fast when they saw rows of pastries, rolls, and cookies arranged perfectly enticing and sweet just out of reach behind the counter.
            “You want a cookie? Of course you want a cookie, which one do you want?”
            “Well I dunno.”
            I knew exactly which one he wanted. “Yeah you do, choose one.”
            “Well alright, I’ll have that peanut butter one then.” He said this with an “if I have to” attitude.
            We went and sat down at a table waiting for our food to arrive. He was wearing one of my sister’s academy memorabilia caps with “NAVY” stitched across the front in bold. He had served in the navy, too. A man walking by stopped and began asking him questions about the Navy, where and when he served, what boat he was on, thanked him for his service. They launched into a couple of boat stories when a woman at the table next to us, openly eavesdropping, butted in and thanked him for his service as well. She leaned over to whisper into my ear. “You need to get this all down before it’s all gone.” She’d said gently squeezing my arm.  Our food came and we woofed. He leaned back sucking his teeth. “Full?” “Yup.” “Good.” He wiped his mouth and blew his nose. His attention went back to the table, and he was suddenly delighted to find the peanut butter cookie sitting there just waiting for him as if it hadn’t been there all along. It went down in two bites and a smack of his lips.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Sure, if you are.”

“Let’s go on a walk when we get back.”

“Alright.”

“Think it will rain?”

I shrugged my shoulders, the clouds were dark. “Possibly.”

I’m sure my dad and his siblings had seen the wrath of Dave, but by the time he got around to being grandpa it must have all petered out.  The only time I’d ever seen him angry was when I pulled up to the driveway in a tow truck hauling my 1973 Datsun 240z, the fender shredder and most the left side of the car gone from a tire flying off at fifty miles per hour. His lips were tight, his eyes serious, eyebrows furrowed, arms folded over his chest. His voice shook when he spoke. I know what he saw when he looked at the car and then at me. He saw all those cars he used to crash working at GMC, metal wrapping around mangled and decapitated crash dummies. Photographs of the car crash victims he worked so hard to keep safe. And here I was driving a car whose tire had just flown over a stop light and disappeared through an intersection as the car scrapped to a stop carving out the pavement beneath it. When he’d first seen the car, he’d clicked his tongue and shook his head.

We slid into the family Chevy Malibu, a much safer choice. He fumbled with the seat belt a little. On his pinky he wore my grandmother’s simple, silver wedding band. Driving back home we talked about travel, all the places he’d been and all the places I wanted to see and where I was going next. He paused in our conversation for a moment. His eyes softened, they were very clear and so did his voice. “You remind me a lot of Matty.”
            “Who?” I wanted to ask, but didn’t thinking I had heard wrong, or maybe his mind had wandered a bit. 

By pure circumstance, that Christmas my mother asked me to put together a present for Grandpa; a book of all the letters young Dave had written to young Patricia while deployed overseas. The letters began, “Dear Matty--”

The way he wrote, you could tell he loved her deeply. He was a young, rowdy Navy lad patrolling the Pacific and Japan with the boys, and yet he still concerned himself with Pat’s choices in china patterns.  It took a special kind of man to marry a stubborn, strong, adventurous woman like her. Yet, I can only imagine what it must have been like when they first met at Purdue. Was Dave ever nervous when he tried talking to Patricia? Did they trade glances in which only his eyes could portray the true meaning of how he felt? Had he won her heart with that classic Dave Siems look?

The letters ended, “Your Lover”. I tended to forget they were once young…

            Rain started to patter the windshield as we pulled up to the garage. I turned off the engine and we sat for a moment.
            “Guess we’ll go for that walk later, huh?”
            “Yeah, guess so.”
            I looked at him full in the face and on into his clear blue eyes. The same eyes that saw the world; that fell in love with Patricia Louise Siems; that watched his family grow into men and a woman with families of their own; that guarded us grandkids as we swam in the lake.
            I looked into those eyes and I saw us.  Even now, I sit cross legged in my hut with an album at hand open to a picture of him holding my nephew in his lap. He’s got the biggest smile on his face and that sparkle in his eyes that say volumes—Great Grandpa. I look at the picture and I see my cousins; I see all my uncles and all my aunts; I see my brother; I see my sister and my mother; I see my father; and I see me. When I see him there in all the lives he has been a part of and touched, I know that I am blessed to be a part of his legacy.

Grandpa, I love you.