1. Stilts were all the rage 
    that summer. Everyone 
    in the neighborhood under ten 
    wanted them, so my father 
    drove us to the workshop 
    just north of the tracks on Route 60, 
    where my grandfather’s company 
    built refrigerated truck bodies. 
    We stepped into a snow globe 
    of sawdust. 
  1. And here I’m desperate
    for you to smell
    the pungent sawdust
    coating every surface 
    of the workshop – 
    floor, benches, windowsills.
    Motes floated in streaming sunlight, 
    lined our nostrils with a damp,
    concentrated spice. 
    We inhaled wood 
    and left with two well-built stilts.
  1. The workshop exists now
    only in the memory of a few people
    and on a box of letterhead 
    my father saved in his desk.
    After my grandfather retired
    and the workshop closed, 
    a sign still hung from a pole – 
    light blue script on peeling white – 
    SAMCO 
    Schmidt and Markworth Company.
    At some point that disappeared, too. 
  1. But in 1962 that workshop 
    helped support the unplanned family
    my parents found themselves heading.
    They bought a single-entry ledger,
    crimson spine, pebbled black cover
    and, two days after the wedding,
    began to count every penny in 
    and out for the next fifteen months.
    Ribbon at Ben Franklin, 51 cents.
    Laundry, $1.00. Meat, $1.40.
    Carton of cigarettes, $2.49. 
    Rent, $75. Teacher’s paycheck, $149.
    On the 19th of every month, 
    they paid my grandfather $26.98 
    on their loan. They bought a TV 
    in installments, wedding money
    the down payment. And
    when school wasn’t in session,
    my father worked at SAMCO,
    adding anywhere from $8 to $78
    to the ledger.
  1. My friend the psychic
    has said twice that she senses
    my grandfather around me,
    a supportive, protective presence.
    I’m surprised because I didn’t think
    of us as close but then remember:
    he introduced me
    to the books of Edgar Cayce,
    the idea of reincarnation,
    astral travel, Atlantis, Lemuria.
    A fifth grader, I sped through
    his library, changed by
    what I’d read: accepting a world
    of spirits, mysteries, miracles.
  1. Again now
    I read his brittle paperbacks
    to remind me of other
    realities – the mother’s ghost
    I saw pressing against
    her son’s shoulders, the “No!”
    I heard to warn me away, the
    dream that mapped my 40s.
    Imagine my grandfather,
    faithful Lutheran born in 1909,
    father of six, school board member – 
    blue uniform covered in sawdust –  
    contemplating reincarnation
    as he fed wood into the saw.