Bennett and the Whale

Bennett loves to gnaw on anything he can get his mitts on these days. In the tub tonight, I watched him gumming the dickens out of a red foam whale, looking up at me with his sweet, guileless eyes. "An heir of Jonah, avenging his ancestor?" I mused to myself, smiling.

Bennie is so undiscerning when it comes to what he eats, certainly, but also when it comes to friends. His love is lavished on whomever he chooses. Take tonight, for instance. We were at an event and encountered a woman there who I often find to be impudent, ungrateful and just generally irritating, god love her. I was trying to avoid eye contact and conversation when I noticed Bennie giggling and flirtatiously peering over my shoulder at someone. Turning around, I found myself face to face with HER! I love Bennie!

My maternal grandfather is 80 years old, and he's not well these days. Conversations - okay, they're really monologues - have steadily narrowed over the years to two main areas:
1. an attempt to rehabilitate the world's perception of Germany and its citizenry post WWII and mount a defense of Germany's actions
2. a lamentation of his father's job loss (circa 1930) at the hands of the union.
In other words, how Germany and his father got screwed. It can get quite ugly.

I want to hear stories about his childhood, his parents, his life. I want to write names on the backs of photos and draw the family tree. I want to get to know him, and I want him to know me. But there's grandpa in front of the blaring TV that nobody's watching, eating over-ripe fruit and no-name potato chips, elucidating on his favourite topics. Full of invective, his anger sprays like buckshot on any easy target: aboriginal peoples (except his brother-in-law), jews (except his business partner), socialists (except his father), the poor, today's immigrants. He wants to pass his grudges on like a mantle to the next generation, to me. I silently nibble at the chips, impervious after all these years.

Sometimes I fantasize about asking him, "Grandpa, what legacy do you want to leave the world? Is this it?" In my dream, I tell him that his anger and prejudices will die when he does. It sounds harsh, I know. So is he.

When I gave birth to my first son, I was flooded with a sense of redemption. I felt as if his birth alone was enough to erase all human misdeeds and evil-doings. It wasn't just one baby, 2000 years ago, that burst onto the scene with this gift. Every new life that enters the world has this power.

I look at Bennett and pray that he will always radiate the redemptive quality that he arrived with. May he bury my petty prejudices, my fears, my anger with me.

Looks like he's off to a good start.