Smile

I left class today. I needed a break from the thick fog of institutional overheating and biblical grammar.  I had an eternal smile stuck in my head that I couldn’t shake; not a new age, digital smile but an authentic, vinyl smile with the grooves and contours of age. I sauntered towards the empty fountain situated in the middle of the academic courtyard and popped a squat on the cold Jerusalem stone, soaking up the February sun and staring blankly at the blue sky, spray painted with winter clouds.  I whipped out my iPhone and went searching for the record revolving at a brisk 33 RPM on the platter of my mind.  I vertically swiped through 855 pictures until I landed at #260 - the last picture I have with my grandfather. 

It’s not perfect - Ramblewood Diner’s finest waitresses hadn’t quite figured out how to use a touch screen with their long, fake nails, leaving the picture a little blurry.  Yet every time I see that picture, my grandfather’s eternal smile is crystal clear, and somehow that makes everything okay.

As I sat back down in class and discretely showed Lucy a picture of my grandfather, the tears began to well as they have so many times over the past month and a half since he passed.  Yet the power of my grandfather is that each cathartic cry brought with it an inevitable smile.  A smile at his infinite libido (a Kress gene, he insisted). A smile at how many times he whooped my tuches at bowling and pool.  A smile at his charismatic performances of Louis Prima’s Angelina-Zooma Zooma medley.  A smile at his selective use of derogatory Yiddish.  I just couldn’t help but smile. 

With much joy I often imagine my grandfather meeting Mitch upstairs, forming an instant bromance.  I imagine Mitch attempting to educate my rap-hating grandfather on hip hop culture - to which my grandfather responds: This is music:

I imagine them wooing women in tandem with their seductive, loving smiles.  I imagine gentlemen developing severe man-crushes on them.  I imagine them amplifying each other’s radiance and shining joy on everyone they pass - as they continue to do every day in our hearts and memories.

In Rabbi Rex Perlmeter’s (Mitch’s dad) inspirational piece Love IS Stronger than Death, he writes “Every relationship in our lives must end. Some will end when they’re ‘supposed to’; others not.”  Though my grandfather went when he was ‘supposed to’ and Mitch far, far, far too young, the impact these men have had on my life is profound.  They taught me the joy of music, the love of family and the bliss of simplicity. They taught me to keep smiling.  

Every day I strive to be like Mitch, to be like my grandfather, and for that I am truly a better person.