A Vague, Misty Memory

I remember vaguely, in a fuzzy, slightly out of focus sort of way, when I was a little girl. My grandpa would come pick me up and take me to the park out on Barron Lake road and let me play there until the sun started to set, and he would give me those little suckers with white and different colored polka dotted wrappers. Then he would pick me up and carry me back to his old green 74 Chevy and we would go back to the house and wait for grandma to get home. I think we did this every Friday. More than any of that, I remember in my minds eye, the long blonde pigtails, the sparkle in my brown eyes and mostly the smile on my face. I don't think I've smiled like that since I was little. It was a smile that made my whole face light up. One that you could see in my eyes. Nowadays my eyes don't smile. They look sad, or they're just there. The 74 Chevy is dead now, and the most interaction my grandfather has with me is when he tells me how stupid whatever action I'm doing is or how I'm screwing up my life in this way or that. We don't spend any time just the two of us and I hurt sometimes inside because of that. He's an old man now and the days I have with him are numbered. And yet we just don't have the relationship we did when I was young and we never will again. I love him, and I miss that feeling that I only partly remember.