On report card day,

we stopped by Papaw’s house

on the way home

he polished his glasses

on his shirt front

slid my grade card

from its manila sleeve

opened it carefully

and studied

for a long moment

“Can’t you do any better than that?”

he teased,

hiding a grin

eyes twinkling

“Straight As again!”

I wonder now

if he knew

how much he

contributed toward those As

Not just hard-working

genes

but all the countless

crosswords I watched him

solve, with a ball point pen

the hours of scrabble

we played after he’d

worked all day

in the hot sun

phone calls just to tell

me funny jokes

“Did you hear the one

about the pencil?

Well, there’s no point to it.”

and jigsaw puzzles

we worked together

on the kitchen table

(a thousand-pieces of

nothing but strawberries

took us so long

we had it framed)

and Easter egg

scavenger hunts

for the grown-ups

when Papaw chose

the hiding places

and urged me to write

rhyming hints

the prize

a fifty dollar bill

in a plastic egg

and on the day I

graduated high school

Papaw put on his

dressiest clothes

and applauded my

Salutatorian’s speech

Only weeks later,

Papaw’s giant heart

stopped

and mine broke

but I still have all

those memories

and

I only hope he knew

when it came to

being a grandpa

he couldn’t have done

any better than that.