I remember fishing with my grandfather when I was four and he was sixty-two. Or thereabouts. It wasn’t his choice to take me fishing, and he was grumpy because he liked to fish alone and besides he thought a little girl’s place was in the kitchen with grandma. But he began to thaw when I took the worm off the hook and ate it. He gleefully told my mother what I had done when we got home, laughing his high-pitched laugh that whistled through his nose, something like a tea kettle.  

I wasn’t scared of him even when he was grumpy. He smelled of wood smoke and some kind of astringent soap. His eyes were brown with thick black lashes, like a doe’s eyes. When he took a nap after we got back from fishing, sitting in his ratty armchair with his slippers half-falling off his feet, his lashes fluttered against his cheeks, beating time in harmony with his snoring.