“I was wrong.”
That’s what Poppy said when I walked into his kitchen tonight. He looked up from the sink and said, “I was wrong.”
“About what?” I said.
He turned from the sink. He was holding a cantaloupe. He held it out to me. “What can I do with this?”
I groaned. I grabbed the cantaloupe. I slammed it on the counter. “Jeez, Poppy, don’t you know anything?” I yanked open the counter drawer. All I saw were a couple of butter knives, forks, and spoons. “Where’s your long knife?” I said. “For cutting big stuff?”
He looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. “Long knife?”
I glared at him. “How do you expect to cut a watermelon? Slice bread? Cake? A turkey?”
“I’ll get a long knife,” he said.
I stared at the pitiful drawer. I shook my head. “You’re not even civilized. You don’t even have an ice-cream scoop.”
“I don’t eat ice cream,” he said.
I snapped. “Well, I do!”
“Okay—okay,” he said. “I’ll get a long knife and an ice-cream scoop.”
“And fudge ripple,” I told him. “Every time I come to this house, I want there to be fudge ripple ice cream in the freezer. You know what a freezer is, don’t you?”
He saluted. “Yes, ma’am.”
I poured myself an OJ from the fridge. “See, you got me all worked up.”
“Must be Bite Off Grandpa’s Head Day.”
I snicker-snorted. “Sorry. I’m in a crappo mood.” I flopped into a chair. “So what are you so wrong about?”
He sat down. “My advice to you. Telling you to get a life. Origami. Gardening. All that.”
“Why’s it wrong?”
“It’s wrong because—” He stopped, stared at me. “Look—what’s the bottom line here? What are we trying to accomplish?”
I didn’t have to think long. “Get me back with my brother. Get our goombla back.”
He smacked the table. “Exactly. And listen to the word you said—get.”
“So?”
“So, goombla, twin magic—whatever you want to call it—it’s not something you can chase after, reach for, get. You’ve been trying too hard. You’re forcing it.”
This time I smacked the table. “Well duh, of course I’m forcing it. I want it.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way. It’s like love. You can’t try to love somebody. Either it’s there or it’s not.”
I felt a chill. “Are you saying our goombla isn’t there? It doesn’t exist? I might as well give up?”
He patted my hand. He laughed. “It’s there, all right. Once entangled, forever entangled. You have to trust that.”
I was getting dizzy from all this fancy thinking. “So I just wasted the last couple of weeks—because I was trying too hard?”
He nodded. “Right.”
“So what am I supposed to do now?”
He smiled. “Stop trying. Give life a chance to just happen.”
“Poppy,” I whined, “you’re driving me crazy. First you say try. Now you say don’t try. First you say get a life. Now you say don’t get a life.”
He nodded, like I was making perfect sense. “Right. Because life will get you. Took me awhile to figure that out.”
“But what about my brother? What about us? Our goombla?”
He flicked his hand. “Walk away from it. Turn your back on it.” He smiled. “Forget it.”
I pounded the table. “Never!”
He took both my hands in his. “Listen, your goombla is a gift. You didn’t ask for it and you can’t give it away. But you’re smothering it. It can’t breathe. You need to back off. Let go of it.”
I cried, “I can’t!”
He stood. He got the cantaloupe. He sat it in the middle of the table. He patted it. “Now stand up and turn around.”
“Poppy—”
“Do it. Stand up and turn your back on the cantaloupe.”
I stood up. I turned around.
“Can you see it?” he said.
“No.”
“Okay, now turn back.”
I did.
“And what do you see on the table?”
“A cantaloupe.”
“It didn’t disappear when you turned your back, did it?”
“Poppy—”
“Did it?”
“No.”
He patted the cantaloupe. “Think of this as your goombla. Every day from now on it’s going to be right here, whether you give it attention or not.”
I sighed. “I don’t know, Poppy.”
He came over and hugged me. “You don’t have to know. That’s what grandpas are for. All you have to do is trust me. Trust life to find you.”
I looked up into my grandfather’s eyes. “I trust you,” I said. “It’s life I don’t trust.”