Dear Luki,

If there’s something I inherited from your grandpa, it’s my terrible organizational skills. Case in point: your diaper bag. A place from which I can never retrieve what I’m looking for without first making my way through a labyrinth of mismatched socks, expired jars of baby food, diapers that are now two sizes too small, and the occasional rotten banana.

I’m messy, I’ll admit it. But there’s order to my madness and (minus the occasional rotten banana) I can always remember where I left things. Of course, whenever I go back to find the pair of pants I know I left on the bathroom floor, or the magazine I distinctly recall placing on the counter right next to the stove, they’re never there because your father decided to move them. And I spend hours trying to find them until it finally occurs to me to look in our closet, or in that magazine rack we keep in a corner. In my head, it just doesn’t seem logical for things to actually be in their proper place.

Your grandpa was the same way. Disorganized and chaotic, but always on top of his game. One of the things we all used to tease him about was his “rolodex” — a collection of pieces of cardboard, sticky notes, and scraps of paper with different numbers on them. Sometimes there was a word next to the number, like chili or pita, other times it was a few letters (perhaps initials?), many times there was nothing at all. But he always had the right information when he needed to make a call.

When it came time to pay his employees, it was the same way. Sometimes he wrote down the hours they worked on restaurant receipts or the outside of envelopes, but most of the time, he just kept track of it in his head. And he was never wrong.

It’s not exactly the best quality to have, to be so scattered. And yet, it’s also not the worst. (Although your dad would probably disagree with me there.) But in all honesty, I believe, and I think your grandpa did too, that being flawless, or at least appearing to be, isn’t something we should spend too much time striving for. Those things are cosmetic, and trite, and fleeting. Your grandpa preferred to work on more permanent things. Like his patience, and his work ethic, and his kindness, and his ability to find and give joy every single day.

Because the thing is, Luki, that occasionally rotten bananas could easily be cleaned up from the bottom of diaper bags, but I can’t say the same for decomposing souls.

Love,

Mom