Opa...

I remember hearing stories over the years about Opa being a tough dad. It always seemed odd to hear them, because I literally cannot remember a time that any of us “little ones” ever really got scolded or corrected by him. Even if it completely upset him that we would destroy his shed on a regular basis, looking for paint and wood scraps for our latest architectural venture, he basically let it go.

I guess that’s the perk of being a grandkid.

Our Opa became the neighborhood Opa. I’m still not sure some of our friends even knew he had a name until we were at least teenagers, and the fact that at least a dozen unrelated children comfortably called him “Opa” is a testament to the kind of man he was.

While Opa wasn’t as openly cuddly or traditionally affectionate as some grandfathers may be, he was always, always thinking about his family. Not that there weren’t the occasional bear hugs, but more often his love was shown through a ruffling of our hair and a “Ja, girl…” as he passed by. If he found a magazine article or National Geographic he thought one of us would like, he made sure we got it. If there was an animal or place we liked, we got a handmade statue of it. Our favorite colors, teams, and cartoon characters were turned into fuzzy pillows. There are quite a few little wooden desks floating around our houses that the next generation of Smoorenburg babies will be big enough to use pretty soon.

Opa is always on our radar, consciously or not. Sometimes, his comfort with a person served as a barometer for predicting the longevity of our romances. If Opa liked our “friends” enough to spend time telling him stories about WWII or his days as a Merchant Marine, we knew he was a keeper. Other times, we could hear the buzz of a plane and automatically think “Opa would know what that is.” Even little things like grocery shopping are touched, like when there’s an interesting little oily canned fish on the shelf and our first thought is “Ooh…Opa would love that.”

While it is easy to imagine Opa as a father with high standards for his kids, a boss with the same for his employees, and a scout master doing likewise with his troop, we got, in the most traditional sense of the word, a “grandpa.” We got a piano-playing, storytelling, craft-making, tripod-loving man who could do a mean shuffle on the dance floor.