‘Lyceum’
Allen Forrest is a painter and cartoonist, winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University's Reed Magazine, his Bel Red landscape paintings are in the Bellevue College Foundation's art collection. He lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Lyceum
Under the curtain of pre-dawn light, I sleepily scrolled through my email this morning with the type of clarity that comes with that first sip of coffee, pulling me reluctantly from the honesty of sleep. The word of the day today was “lyceum,” I noticed, a noun, meaning “a literary institution, lecture hall, or teaching place.”
The sky’s pigment outside began to bloom pink in the interstitial space between night and day, and the breath caught in my throat as the word “lyceum” conjured an image of a man who once came bearing gifts. You see, I had a father who was universally well-liked, whose energy depicted a gentle giant with a contagious laugh, who donned a Santa Claus costume and visited my school with his guitar during the holidays, his fictitious gift bag effortlessly swinging in step with his animated gait.
But he is not the one I envisioned this morning. Instead, I saw my grandfather, a big black garbage bag slung over his shoulder, coming down his walkway and opening the screen door to the three-family house that he worked two jobs to support before cancer took him from us.
Inside the bags were never fancy or extravagant gifts. Instead, they held a working man’s bonus – miscellaneous items from the local Lyceum building that he cleaned at night after working as a guard at Sing Sing Correctional Facility during the day. He would pull out paraphernalia like reams of wrapping paper, graph paper, scented stickers, bars of soap, toilet paper, legal pads, and various other novelties.
I blinked and saw our family’s reel to reel videos showcasing the same wrapping paper over generations, the prudent mark of a depression era and post-war family. “If nobody wants this, I won’t bother bringing it home anymore,” he would say impatiently to hide his disappointment as family members whizzed by, my grandmother hurriedly wiping the ammonia scented kitchen counters as he sat hoping that someone would see that bag as the treasure chest he meant it to be. I see the twinkle in his eye as I would peel off the pizza-scented stickers as a child, laughing because they smelled so strongly of artificial oregano.
Decades before love languages became a part of our everyday vernacular, I saw that my grandfather’s love language was acts of service. Not a fan of holiday fanfare, he opted to work on Christmas for the overtime, preferring to come home and enjoy my grandmother’s humble gourmet meals in peace and quiet. Never one to ask for flashy gifts, he preferred practical items like cartons of Lucky Strike cigarettes or inexpensive boxes of handkerchiefs that my grandmother would iron and fold for him each day, a temporary balm for his respiratory system weakened from multiple bouts of pneumonia from his days delivering ice as a teenager.
After his death, bags of his goods still remained in my grandmother’s cellar. I can feel the smile at the corner of his eyes, knowing that my grandmother would never again have to buy soap, the soft imprint of the tiny bars remaining on her pink porcelain bathroom soap tray until the end.
My grandfather’s home became his lyceum, the set of World Books proudly displayed on his built-in living room shelves, his reading of the local newspaper cover to cover each day, his dutiful completion of the crossword puzzle, and thoughtful and ardent letters to the editor. I see the photo of him taken for his campaign to be on the Village Board of Trustees, his skinny tie and intense gaze promising the kind of frankness that likely deterred residents. I see him opening the letters from my private school, proudly acknowledging the official seal and the words of the alma mater written in embossed typescript at the top of each correspondence. “What do we always say?” he would often ask his granddaughters, “there are no dummies in this family!”
I would have liked to tell him that I saw him, and recognized him, even as a child. It was more instinctive for him to say, “I got a whole bag of notebooks if you need any,” than to say, “I love you so much,” more his nature to quietly hand his paychecks to my grandmother throughout his life than it was to buy her ostentatious gifts.
I see him at the end, coming home for the final time after the surgery and treatment that almost killed him, the color in his face ashen, his body thin and weak under his golf shirt from the cancer and sepsis and months in the intensive care unit. His hair somehow remained in its neat, homemade high fade, reminiscent of his army training days in Galveston, his chin still darkened with a five o’clock shadow in the early afternoon.
As he passed his humble yard, the American flag always proudly displayed, I saw him momentarily as a young man in his prime in the service, his Western Irish skin practically black from the strong Gulf sun, his dark, wild hair starting to curl in the humidity despite his best efforts to tame it. I saw his boxer’s stance, solid as the rock of Gibraltar, his eyes subtly scanning with his uncanny ability to effortlessly maintain law and order.
That day, I saw the will in his eyes as ours met briefly as he made his way slowly and steadily from the car, down the walkway to his front door, his metered and quietly commanding pace evoking years of patrolling the Air Force base, then the concrete grounds of the prison, a single generation removed from the Irish Famine where his predecessors walked miles over the sodden inhospitable terrain for the simple yet empty promise of food or shelter.
As a child, I didn’t run to him and jump for a hug and kiss, but instead waited behind the screen door, holding it open against the tight metal springs that tried to pull it from my small hands. In that moment was an unspoken exchange, an understanding, an acceptance. “Thank you,” I would say now. “Thank you for protecting us, for giving us the safety of our home, for showing us that we could do more, learn more, and have a seat at the table.” But I didn’t speak. Instead, my grandfather stepped into his house and I finally released the door behind him, the springs swinging closed and slapping against the aluminum frame, the general safely returned to his stronghold.
The memory of the sound brings me back to the present day. Later that morning, I found myself making the daily walk across the parking lot into another municipal brick building, an urban public library that I have the privilege to help oversee. My windbreaker embossed with the official seal of the city, my pace trying to match his, I use my badge to unlock the door and hear the heavy metal shut behind me as his spirit compels me to continue to walk forward, head high, unwavering.
Katharine Chung is a graduate of SUNY Purchase College. An Assistant Director in an urban public library by day, she enjoys stand-up paddle boarding with her dog, night photography, an eclectic taste in music, and movies in her free time. Her poetry has previously been published in Italics Mine, The Word’s Faire and Wildroof Journal. Find her on Instagram @vegancinephile.
