There is a room in my great-aunt’s house. Carpet floors, an old upright piano, and a big block of oak wood fastened to the ground with giant bolts. She said that this was where her father, my great-grandfather, would practice tap dancing. Hours a day he would stand on that block, slowly chipping away at the wood. Even his reinforced leather shoes would slowly deteriorate. He would use the same shoes on the same block until he was 84, when he finally hung up his lifelong hobby. Every year, we used to visit that house in Scotts Valley, California. Every year, I heard stories from my great-aunt about my great-grandfather and my perfect resemblance to him. Every year, until she lost her 48 year battle with cancer and the house was sold, there was a different story waiting for me.
A box came in the mail for me, giant and ridiculously heavy, probably from miles of wrapping tape and “fragile” stickers. When I opened it, I found the weight could be credited to framed photographs of various family members in their youth. My grandpa was there, even my mom as a toddler, shooting her brother with a BB gun. There were old wool blankets and knitted scarves along with a set of old wooden chess pieces with a gorgeous carved, mahogany chess board. Underneath all that, however, was another box labeled “Jack.” I never quite understood why my aunt thought I was exactly like her father. I mean, I never met him, how would I know if I was like him? But inside the smaller box, beneath all the memories I didn’t experience, I found my resemblance.
There was a pile of music scores, each tattered page filled with the chicken scratch handwriting of my great-grandfather. Every measure altered to fit his routine on stage. He manipulated chords, extending cadences to match his prolonged tap solo moments. It struck me when I noticed the dark spots from the broken pencil lead on the page. I understood the strive for perfection, breaking lead on the pages of my own compositions, constantly changing things to fit the orchestra or film. My own chicken scratch handwriting, legible only to me. My own desire to highlight the beauty of music.
Under the scores was a single 7-iron golf club head without its shaft. He had broken it off from playing entire rounds with the single club. The grooves were almost completely faded, dirt replacing the faded aluminum shine. It reminded me of my basketballs, five of the same kind, all torn and beaten in their own way. Some permanently muddied from my friends’ football-like basketball game we invented called “Possession,” others colorless from the years of bouncing on uneven asphalt. My grandpa wasn’t Tiger Woods and I’m not Micheal Jordan, but we played our hearts out, enjoying every last moment.
At the very bottom, in a protected case, were his practice tap shoes. Not the shoes he wore while performing, not his autographed ones, but his ragged, practice shoes. I smiled. “Thank you, Aunt Deanna.”
There will be a room in my house. Bookshelves on every wall. Not full of awards and trophies, but memories. Not memories of my great-grandfather, but of my aunt and her stories. I loved to sing with her, to listen to her talk about anything; about how he would sing to her, dance with her, and sit with her when she was too sick to stand. Without her, that box only holds old shoes, a broken golf club, and torn sheets of old French paper. I am like my grandfather, a perfectionist tireless man aiming to invent new ways to play the same game, but I become nothing if I am not like my aunt: a passionate storyteller.
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