I jumped into him so hard he went, “Ouff!” and fell back on the sofa. We swarmed over him, first with ourselves, then with questions.
“Poppy! Aren’t your feet cold?”
“Poppy! Did you find yourself?”
“Poppy! How long are you staying?”
I think the answers were “Freezing,” “Yep,” and “Till you kick me out.”
Poppy’s hair was still long but now it was white and tied in a ponytail. Dad brought him a pair of socks for his bare feet. “I guess I’ve been to too many warm places lately,” he said. “I forgot about snow.”
We talked and talked till my tongue got tired. We had pizza and chicken wings delivered, and we could hardly eat we were talking so much. Relatives came over and we ordered more pizza and wings. Jake and I put on our sombreros and said si instead of yes whenever we got a chance.
When the visitors left, Poppy reached behind the sofa and pulled out a little green sack. There were two things in it, identical as usual. “They’re castanets,” he said. They reminded me of clamshells. He showed us how to hold them and make them clack. “Now you can sing and dance too.”
Poppy slept in the spare room. We sat on his blankets in our pj’s till after midnight. Mom had to kick us out.
We prayed for another snow day but when morning came, no luck. Poppy wanted to sleep in but we wouldn’t let him. We dragged him down to breakfast. Mom made waffles, a dead giveaway that these were special times.
Poppy walked us to school. He wore Dad’s socks under his sandals. We wanted him to come in. “You can talk about geography!” I said. “They’ll bring you a grown-up-sized chair,” Jake said. He laughed and said no thanks. He was waiting for us when school got out.
Poppy hates malls so we stayed away from them. In fact we didn’t go places much at all. He just wanted to stay home and play Monopoly and poker, and talk. “Good grief,” Mom said to me and Jake on the second night, “don’t you two ever run out of questions? Give your poor Poppy a break.”
“Poppy, did you ever get attacked by pirates?” (No.)
“Poppy, did you ever eat eels?” (Yes. And snakes and grasshoppers.)
“Poppy, were you a hippie?” (Definitely.)
After lights-out the second night I asked Jake if he thought it was okay to ask Poppy about Grandma. Up until then we were afraid to, like it was taboo. But I was getting itchy.
“No,” said Jake flat out.
“Why not?” I said.
“Because,” he said.
“That’s not a reason,” I said.
“Go to sleep,” he said.
So next night at dinner I said, “Poppy, was Grandma a hippie too?”
Mom and Dad stopped chewing. Jake glared at me. The only one who didn’t seem bothered was Poppy. Not just his mouth but his whole face smiled, and he said, “I thought you’d never ask.” And we were off to the races.
“Let’s see…,” he said. “Grandma danced on the beach and she did sit-ins for civil rights and she marched against the war and she said stuff like ‘Far out’ and ‘Groovy’ and she wore bell-bottom pants and she drank carrot juice and her feet were always dirty…so…yeah, Grandma was a hippie too, just like me. In fact, now that I think about it, that’s pretty much how hippies came—in pairs.”
We didn’t have to ask more questions. Poppy just went on and on about his life with Grandma in California. They had lots of jobs, from waiting on tables to picking oranges. They were living over a garage when Mom was born. Mom laughed: “I was a hippie baby!” They named her Dovey, as a sign of peace.
It must have been a nice garage, because a year later they had another baby, Uncle Peaceboy. They lived over the garage till the kids were in high school. Poppy and Grandma got regular jobs and started to look more like regular people. They started wearing shoes and they didn’t dance on the beach much anymore. “One thing I wouldn’t give up,” said Poppy, “my long hair.” He laughed. “Barbers hated me.”
When Mom and Uncle Peaceboy grew up and moved away, Grandma and Poppy junked all their shoes but their sandals. Poppy burned his one necktie and they went back to being big-time hippies. “Except nobody called us that anymore,” said Poppy, looking a little sad. “The war was over and so was the age of the hippies. We sort of discovered the earth. Everything from fish to snails was in danger. The air stank and the water was disappearing. I think we might have been the first of the greenies. That’s when your grandma started climbing trees.”