This I Believe . . .

I remember the wheelchair the most.

And the white blanket that was always wrapped around his shriveled legs. The way his mouth contorted when he spoke. The way he bossed everyone around. And how he yelled and yelled.

“Lu!!!!” he would shout across our house, like a dog-owner calling a disobedient pet. “Lu!!!!!”

“I’m right here,” my grandmother would say with a warm smile as she strode to his side.
Sometimes she would only be a few feet away.

It was hardly a good first impression.

I met my grandfather when I was 7. I mean, I’m sure we were introduced long before when I was younger, but that was the first time I really met him.

Papa Ed we called him, and from the minute I laid my 7-year-old eyes on him, I knew I hated him.

I saw how he treated everyone in our family. Barking out orders. Everything was about his needs – what he wanted. He even yelled at me. I couldn’t help but hate that old man in the wheelchair.

He died not long thereafter, crippled by cancer from a lifetime of smoking. I wasn’t sad, even though everyone at the funeral talked about how great of a loss it was. All I could think about was much better off my grandmother was now that he was gone. How much better off everyone was.

When I was young, I made a mistake.

I never really met Papa Ed. After years of fighting a debilitating and painful disease, I had met the ghost of a man that had died long before. And yet I judged him. I couldn’t help but wonder how my father could have grown up with this man as his father. Years of stories around the dinner table taught me the inaccuracies of that first impression. He had been a well-respected rocket scientist. He had been a loving father, and a caring husband.

I never really grasped the power a first impression can have until I pored over the whole story a decade later. I always suspected there was something important about first impressions – otherwise my mother wouldn’t have harped on the subject before every job interview. I just didn’t know the extent.

I based entire perception of who my grandfather was on a few short moments. Looking back, I’m filled with regret. I regret not mourning my grandfather’s death. I regret being so quick to judge a man who had to endure the mental pain of knowing his days were numbered in addition to physical pain he felt.

And that is why I believe everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt. Every time I meet someone for the first time, I try to remind myself that I’m only meeting their avatar, the brief Cliffnotes version of who they are. Or simply an extension of how they’re feeling at that particular moment. I think everyone deserves a grace period, and if they mess up, a second chance.

Because sometimes that first meeting is all you get.