Will Write For Food

Edit, #2: if you prefer, the mailing address is:

Buck & Lucy Pool

c/o Bonnie Browning

P O Box 52203

Amarillo, TX 79159-2203


This picture is of my grandparent's holding hands in the hospital. My nanny (what I've always called her. Shut up) was brought in a wheelchair from her room to see my granddad and my aunt caught this on her camera phone. She sent it to my mother who in turn sent it to me.

My grandmother's cancer is back. My grandfather has various health issues. I'm not sad about them approaching death; I do wish it was without suffering.

Grandad is almost 100 and Nanny is not far behind. By my rough calculations, they have been married for over 70 years. They have parented 15+ children (I add the plus because there were more but that's another story and not mine to tell), a whole shit-ton of grandchildren (hi, I'm Crystal. Number 1,842. Really, no need to applaud), great and great-great grandchildren.(And there might be some great-great-great floating around. Shameless hussies, the girls in my family. Hi, Aunt Bonnie! Aunt Judy! Aunt Janet! Aunt ... I lost track. Where was I?)

I am angry for the quality of life they have lost thanks to horribly over-priced medications and a country that doesn't revere their elders and take care of them as we should. I am saddened by what my mom and my uncles and aunts will endure when Nanny & granddad finally succumb and realize, dude, WE'RE OLD. They have worked all of their lives, have lived frugally and without complaint and, seriously, let's just represent: They remember my NAME. That, in itself, deserves some recognition because there's a freaking family forest, not just a family tree.

I am disappointed in myself because it's taken me over a month to write this post and every time I started to publish it, I looked around and saw other's who needed help so I put this on the back burner. I am ashamed. I have this opportunity to help them and I haven't done it because so many people have their hands out these days and I didn't want to abuse the loyalty and friendship and acceptance you have all offered. But I can't sit by any longer. Not after seeing the watch.

My dad came home with it after my mom's last trip to see her parents. He called me and asked me to come pick it up. I went over and he handed me a heavy pocket watch, unremarkable except for the fact that it's over 100 years old and still works perfectly.

"It's Buck's," he told me, using my grandad's nickname. "He bought it from some guy back in the early 1900's. The guy was down on his luck. Your grandad paid him a hundred dollars for that watch to help him out."

"What do I do with it?" I asked.

"I don't know. I told him how you raised money for Kristen, the babies. I thought, maybe..."

I was shocked. My grandparent's have nothing. They don't live in a big house, they live in a tiny, rented trailer in the west Texas heat. Why would my grandad want to give up his watch?

My dad took a deep breath and forged on.

"He doesn't have the money to finish paying for his and Lucy's burial plots. He doesn't want anyone else to be shouldered with that, so he asked me if you could sell it for him," he finished softly.

I looked at the watch that my grandad, soon-to-be father of fifteen children, paid a hundred dollars for in 1932. A hundred dollars. Money that he had earned working one of the most physically demanding jobs in the world: as an oil field roustabout. What he paid was greater than what he earned in a month.

I have looked at that watch a million times in the last month. I have held it and wound it and softly ran my fingers over the etching of the train on the casing. I have wondered how many times since my dad brought it back to Tennessee that my grandad has reached for it and then remembered that it's not there. I wonder what it really cost him, giving that up and asking for help.

I took the watch to a friend of mine who's a jeweler. I had the romantic notion that it would be one of those instances like, "Traveling Antique Show", and he would exclaim and sputter and tell me it was worth one. BILLION. dollars. Instead, he sadly looked at me over the rim of his reading glasses and shook his head. "The craftmanship is invaluable. They don't make them like that any more. But...it's not gold. It's not worth anything."

When I was a little girl, my granddad would buy me a giant box of chocolate Whoppers every Christmas. I would tag along behind him, my cheeks bulging with malt balls, and watch him tend to his vegetable garden and his flowers. Of the hundreds of grandchildren, I was the only one who got a gift. He always spent an extra couple of dollars they didn't have to buy me that box because of what it meant to me. I was a very lonely little girl and he recognized that. He made me feel special because at any other time of the year, I didn't.

That watch is worth something to me. It represents the pride, the love, the dedication to family and the kindness my granddad and Nanny have always shown other people. It reminds me that when I was a little girl, my grandad thought I was pretty great.

I will not sell that watch. I will send it back to him, with a check from me for whatever I can empty out of my medical bill fund and I will hope that it will give him a restful night in the midst of the long nights of worrying that he's endured. That money has been going toward Virginia's medical bills, but, you know what? They can wait. My granddad can't.

The donation button is back up in honor of my grandparent's. If you have ever laughed with me or at me, more importantly, or you think I'm worth a dollar, then I will proudly give it to these two wonderful people who got all busy and made my mom and thus made me.

(If you don't like me and you want payment for having to put up with my shit, the line forms to the left)