Dear Grandpa ...

Dear Gpa,

Today I had a chance to talk for a long time with your younger brother. He took me to dinner and it was great to just toss him question after question.

We talked about Dutch, and he explained to me some of the pronunciation rules and how with a few little tricks you could pronounce most names easily. He said Dutch just uses a lot of extra letters, but they're fairly standard and once you know where they go, it's not much harder than English. (For instance, Peter is spelled Pieter and pronounced the same way - not "pee-AY-ter" like it could look.) I told him the Dutch tonguetwister you taught us (Acht und acht kleine cocklechies ... sp?! ... "eighty-eight little stoves") - he laughed as soon as I started to say it and said that it was the phrase to say if you wanted a sore throat(because of all the gutterals). :) Since we were eating pie at that point, I told him about the other phrase you taught us, too, from your mission (in a Native American language) - "tadakuase" (tuh-DAHK-wah-say) - which means "more pie." (This is one of the most useful phrases I could ever think of, personally. Good choice of which to teach us.)

I love to listen to the Dutch names with someone who knows how to pronounce them. I've been thinking of naming one of my daughters Maaikje (pronounced "micah"). I feel like I can get away with that because there's a lady in the home ward named Maaike (no 'j'). Everyone pronounces it "mickey," for some reason, but she told me once how it's actually said and I fell in love with it. Maybe I'll leave the 'j' out, just to go easy on her grade school teachers, but I really love it in. It's more authentic that way, and it's not like she wouldn't really be Dutch. Hmm. I guess my husband will balance me out on whether this is cruel to do to an American child (even a Dutch-American one). I don't have to decide until then, anyway. Who knows. Maybe I'll have all boys and have to give that name to a pet or a plant.

He told me lots of stories, and some were about you. (He said I was making him think about things he hadn't thought about in years:D that was kinda fun. I really did ask lots of questions.) Speaking of your mission, he told me about you and your three best friends, and how you all wanted to go to Holland so you could serve together, and you all requested it. Hence, the first guy to get his call did go to Holland - and you went to the Eastern States, one went to Argentina, and one went to Australia. You couldn't have gotten farther away from each other:)

He told me about the Harley you used to drive, and how you'd take all the kids around the neighborhood on it. (I felt this the proper time to show him the exhaust pipe burn I got last week.) He said one day you really gunned it, so you could pop a wheelie, and it scared you so much you sold it the next day and bought a rumble seat car, instead. Awesome:) I wanted to show you my burn, too, but this is the best I can do - maybe you saw it, anyway. It's healing nicely, but there will probably be a scar. Even though I did the best I could think of to do for it - I ran it under cold water for twenty minutes, less than two minutes after I got the burn. I didn't have any burn cream, though, and I didn't think to use aloe vera until later. Oh, well.

He told me about how all four of you boys ended up not having to go to dangerous military places you should have gone. You were a helicopter mechanic, which I knew, but what I either didn't know or had forgotten was that the reason they didn't ship you out to Korea was that you were so good at what you did they made you a helicopter mechanic teacher instead, in the States, for all of your active service time. He was a clerk for a colonel and should have come home from his mission and gone into the service right then - they would have shipped him to Vietnam. Instead, he'd ended up finishing most of his two years of active service before his mission, which put him safely in clerk service in Korea as opposed to combat in Vietnam. I wonder if he was ever disappointed that he didn't fight. I know everyone around soldiers like that is happy that they stay out of harm's way, but I know sometimes the soldier himself has mixed feelings. I wonder what he thought of it all.

He was an elementary school teacher. He has, like, five minors - it took him eleven years to do his bachelor's for two reasons - he changed his major a million times, and he kept taking time off to work. (Although, during his last semester of coursework, he also worked 40 hours/week for the post office in Salt Lake - he said it about killed him!) I asked him what were his favorite type of students - the quiet ones, the ones who understood things easily, the ones who had to work hard to understand, etc. He said all of the above. His eyes were just happy when he talked about it - that was special to see. He still keeps in touch with some of his former students. That was fun:) I asked him to tell me about some of them and he mostly told me about the ones he still sees - he seemed to not be able to choose one or two to tell me about. But then, you probably know most of this! I didn't, though, so you get to hear it, too.

He talked about you so well. He said you were always there for people, and that you always went out of your way to be there, too. He said that besides his parents, you were the only one of his family who attended his BYU graduation. This might not have seemed so big had he not mentioned the fact that you (and Grandma? I can't remember) flew out from Virginia to be there! He said you were really a great man. I did already know that.

Anyway, Grandpa, thanks for hanging out with us tonight. It was much-needed and I learned lots of good things. We have a cool family. I miss you, I love you and I hope I'm still making you proud.

Love, Olympus