My grandpa was a man who loved a good project. I don’t know anyone who embraces every part of the process in the same way, from an outlook that saw an opportunity where the rest of us saw a problem, through brainstorming for ideas to mocking up a working model, testing it out and improving it until it was just perfect. Many grandparents might ask about the grandkids’ school work, but my grandpa wasn’t doing it to be polite — he was asking because he knew some of that school work would include some projects! Science projects, especially. When the rest of the class just did the homework to read an article about dinosaurs, Grandpa took me to the natural history museum at KU. We walked around with a notebook and a camera, taking notes, drawing diagrams and making timelines, and on the way home we stopped at the library where Grandpa challenged me to find the dinosaurs from our notes and match up the research we had done at the museum with what was printed in the books. And once we finished that, we came home and built dinosaur models from balsa wood and glued them into displays with moss and rocks, just like the museum displays only smaller. I promise I definitely got an A on my homework the next day.
But my favourite project that we worked on together was making a mousetrap car in the seventh grade. We talked through the basic physics of how a mousetrap could power a little model car and then he stood back while I made my first model. It worked and it went far enough to beat everyone else in my class, but of course it was no amazing accomplishment of mousetrap engineering on a worldwide scale. A week or so later, Grandpa said I had to come over to see his latest project. He’d been curious about how to improve on the design of that first car, so he built a new and improved version, made entirely of things found around the house. The frame was made of old yardsticks, the wheels were made of records, and the darned thing went so far that we had to take it out of the house because it would run into the wall at the end of the longest hallway. My original had only travelled about 12 feet! So Grandpa let me see it run, but he wouldn’t tell me how he made it work. I could look at it just for a little while, and then I had to try to recreate it on my own. I could ask questions, but Grandpa would only answer them if they were the right questions! I got there eventually and I know I learned more about torque and traction and scaled ratios from that project than I ever did in my toughest physics lesson.
I’m sure that some of my own love of projects came from Grandpa, even though my own projects tend to involve paper and glue or a needle and thread rather than mousetraps and dinosaur bones these days. When Grandma and Grandpa came to visit in the week before my wedding, Grandpa helped me with those last minute projects, including making little books for the guests’ favours. I had started to work on them, and after watching for about ten minutes, Grandpa had quietly worked out a way to make the process more efficient. I left the room for a second and came back to find my assembly line had been optimized and I had a foreman willing to work for nothing more than chocolate!
I know I am not the only person to have learned so very much from the way Grandpa took on a project and solved problems without ever being overwhelmed. I hope I can have just a fraction of his calm and logical attitude when faced with the big projects of the years to come and am so very thankful to have had the world’s most amazing grandpa as the father figure in my life.
Miss you.
I know many of you were aware (via
Facebook or
class) of why I hadn’t been posting here as usual. My grandpa passed away on the 11th and he is dearly missed. I was already scheduled to be in my hometown for a wedding, but hadn’t really imagined this turn of events on this visit. Today I took The Boy to the airport to fly home to Londontown (I am staying here a while longer) and made a concerted effort to get back to work on things. That includes blogging and scrapbooking and all the other things that go along with it. Thanks for sticking around while I took a little break from the online world.
xlovesx
Supplies: Dotted Swiss cardstock by Bazzill Basics, patterned papers from Echo Park and the new Cosmo Cricket Togetherness collection, die cut by My Mind’s Eye, Thickers letters and pearl brads by American Crafts and labels by October Afternoon.
All photo credit to The Boy, bless him!
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