He damn sure doesn't wear sunscreen

Granddad loved to be on the water. He taught my husband to fish when he was a little boy. He had a boat they would go out on, or he would drive down to the little park near his house and they would fish in the pond there. They even had a beach house they frequented when the kids were younger. Not too long ago he kept asking about the beach house and when we told him it had been sold a long time ago, with much regret he said “Why did we ever do it? Why did we sell the house? We had so many good times there”.

With all of his talk about being on the water, we decided to take him to the river and get him on a boat. It was my dad’s birthday and we all got out on the water. The sun was bright and high in the sky, the water was as cold as an icebox, the manatees were making friends with us, the kids were laughing, and the boat motor kept leaving us stuck in the middle of the river. This all made for a pretty interesting trip.

When we weren’t being towed by my brother’s boat, granddad was yelling at the boys to “Stop messing around and get down the river”. He really liked going fast on the water. He also really liked the girls in bikinis.

What he did not like, absolutely not one bit, was me trying to put sunscreen on him. His skin is fragile and his head is bare and all I could think about was how bad it was going to be trying to treat sunburn on his poor little body. So, after his refusal to put it on himself, I had some stealthy moves to pull. Every time he would turn his back to me, I’d spray the top of his head. I’d get an arm, another arm, his neck…and every time he was turning side to side trying to figure out where the mist was coming from. Finally, he caught me dodging him and said (with a bit of gusto) “You wanna get knocked off of this thing?!”

After we all laughed hysterically at his (anything but idle) threat, I settled for the job I had managed to finish and we enjoyed watching the kids splash in and out of the water.

That was by far one of the best days we ever had.