Every time I think of my Grandpa Eckelman, no matter what memory I'm re-living, I always picture him smiling. He had the warmest, most genuinely joyous smiles. And while everyone else whose life he passed through may have seen many expressions cross his face, this smile was almost entirely the only expression he ever had for me. There was so much life behind his smile, and I find that 7 years after he left us to engage in hearty debates with God himself, that life has come to touch me in ways I would never have anticipated.
I always thought my Grandpa was special. He was whip smart, and a phenomenal painter. When Marlie and I were little, he taught us how to play ping pong and pool, and played along when we presented him with a tea cup full of costume jewelry and said it was "hot chocolate" from our restaurant. As we got older, I could always look up in the stands during a volleyball game and find him sitting there in his sport coat, eating a hot dog from the concession stand. He rarely missed a game, and he certainly never missed a newspaper clipping the following day.
But above all, he was a great storyteller. (As many grandpas are). When Marlie and I were little, he told us so many stories, so many seemingly tall tales with both heartwarming and ornery characters and adventures. These stories have stayed with me all my life, but one in particular would, nearly 30 years later, come back to me in a life-changing way. The story of the leopard. Pronounced by my grandpa, joyous smile in place, as "the lee-oh-pard."
This is such a magical story to me that I find it an extremely lofty ambition to attempt to share it with others. But I'm going to try, because I am literally incapable of keeping it to myself any longer. I don't even know what order to tell it in, except that to understand the ending of the story, you'll need to understand more about my Grandpa, and more about my relationship with him and his world. So I'll just figure it out as I go.
More to come...
