You Are Here with Me in Every Hardware Store
My grandfather was the kindest man I have ever known. We called him “Pedar Joon” in Farsi which translates into “Dear Father”. I was his first grandchild, the apple of his eye, and I was lucky enough to have more chance to see him in his good days when he was healthy and could still drive and go to work.
He owned a garage outside of city and I had heard tales about him leaving the house before dawn to get to work for over 40 years and coming back late at night, exhausted and greasy but always, always with a smile on his face.
He used to pick me up from school when I was a little girl. It was always a sweet surprise for me as I seldom knew how the day will continue after school, because planning ahead was not my mom’s strong suit. So I never knew when I can expect him to be in the waiting area and when I need to head home straight away after school. But seeing him waiting for me always meant going to my grandparents’s house and there was nothing in my little world that I liked better. He always had a hard time spotting me in a sea of little screaming children liberated by the sound a simple bell all at once, so I used to sneak up on him from behind and scare him. He always laughed so hard at this calling me a little rascal and kissing my forehead. It was our secret game. Sometimes I think he did see me but kept playing the game. He was that much kind.
I remember the time he started having difficulties hearing and the struggles he had with his hearing aid which weren’t quite advanced and easy to use back then. The device kept making a horrible whistle sound and he would spend hours patiently playing with it to figure out how it works. The only TV program he was interested in was the weather forecast at the end of the 7 o’clock news. Years after he had officially retired he’d still religiously check the weather as if he is planning to get to work on time the next morning. He used to sit really close to the TV so he won’t have to turn the volume up and disturb us.
He died 19 years ago on a hot summer day. He had been in the hospital for a couple of weeks following his stroke and my mom and uncle were there while my grandma and the rest of the family were at home. The phone rang, I picked it up and I heard a man, which later on introduced himself as one of his employees was crying and saying something about how he was a great person and he is so sorry to hear he is dead. I was watching the Harry Potter 20th Anniversary on HBO during the weekend and there is a part where they are talking about the fourth movie “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”. The director, Mike Newell, was saying the end of that movie and the tragic death of Cedric Diggory is “the moment when the series comes of age and now the children have left childhood and are going to have to confront the perils of adulthood and it all comes from that moment of death.” Facing death puts an end to the sweet era of childhood and that phone call was the end to mine.
There was a little room at the back of my grandparents’ basement filled with all his tools and hardware. It had a particular oily, greasy, gasoline-y smell which I quite liked. I could sometimes smell the same scent on him when he was picking me up from the school coming from his garage. Almost 20 years have passed, I am now living on the other side of the world. Many more deaths and painful experiences are now living inside me, but every time I walk into a hardware store and I am hit with that familiar smell, suddenly I am an 8-year-old energetic child without a care in the world, looking for his “Pedar Joon” waiting for him after school. Every single time.