Page 15 - You can't Make This Shit Up!

Papa Mac
July 13, 2017
“From good you do not learn”. – My Papa Mac
My mom and I had a talk recently about her father. Mac Soltzer. My papa Mac.
“I really didn’t know him”, my mom told me matter of fact. I can’t stop thinking about that. She told me she has very few memories of her father. She was the baby and her parents vacationed without her. They did almost everything together, but not really with their three daughters. He went to work all day, and so my mom never really spent one on one time with him. It was the times I think. Fathers were fathers back then, whereas fathers are daddy’s today. Nonetheless, it made me think about what i knew of Papa Mac.
My mom’s parents were our “old grandparents”. My dads were our “active grandparents”. By the time I was born Grandma Hazel and Papa Mac were living in Florida.
This is what i remember about him. He was an amazing story-teller. He had a captivating presence and was very handsome. He liked to dance, and we played at the beach. They had a cabana and we would make small shell necklaces with him. He played tennis and was always tan! When I was about 10 I flew alone to Florida to spend a week alone with them. Papa Mac would eat prunes every morning and then drink the juice from the bowl. He slept in a long stripped nightshirt. His hands were like tanned leather and he wore a cap whenever we went outside. We ate once a day at their favorite restaurant in Florida where small pastries were brought to the table. My Grandma Hazel would take what we didn’t eat home and their entire freezer was small bags of these pastries!!
He told me I was smart. He told me that I had “it”, and would do something very great in life. He told me not to be afraid of the hard times because “from good you do not learn”. He was wise. He was kind. He meant so much to me even though I didn’t get to spend a great deal of time with him. “That one” is named after him. He would have been beyond proud of her.
When Papa Mac was a child he had to get some kind of surgery. Family story goes something like
this. His cousin taught him a poem to keep his mind off his pain. That poem was then taught to my mom and aunts, who, in turn, taught all of their children. My girls know it now too. Someone recently told me that a few decades after you die you disappear. That made me sad. As long as we know this poem, my Papa Macs memory is alive. Here is the poem. When my siblings or cousins read this, I am sure I am a word or two off, but this is how I remember it going...