I used to think Grandpa's greatest strength was that nothing seemed to bother him.
A broken tractor.
A ruined field.
A bill that arrived at the wrong time.
He would look at the problem, take a breath, and start figuring out what to do.
He rarely complained.
For years, I mistook that for not feeling much at all.
I know better now.
He felt things.
He simply didn't believe every feeling needed to become somebody else's burden.
That autumn, I returned to Iowa State after helping with the harvest.
My classes were getting harder, and I was spending more time studying soil conditions, crop rotation, and the financial decisions that affected agricultural operations.
Whenever I called home, Grandpa asked about my work.
He never asked about my grades first.
He wanted to know what I was learning and whether I thought it would help me understand the farm better.
One evening, I told him about a lecture on agricultural risk.
Our professor had explained how farmers weighed uncertain yields against fixed costs.
Grandpa listened over the phone while I tried to explain the concepts in my own words.
When I finished, he was quiet.
Then he asked a question.
“What happens if the farmer can't afford to wait?”
I stopped.
I had been talking about risk as though it were something that could always be calculated neatly.
Grandpa was asking about the moment when the numbers stopped being theoretical.
I thought about a broken combine.
I thought about the two thousand dollars he'd needed that morning.
And I thought about the hundred and sixty acres he'd once pledged to help save a bank.
“I suppose he has to make the best decision he can,” I said.
“That's about it.”
He didn't tell me what answer to give my professor.
He didn't need to.
The question stayed with me long after we hung up.
At school, I began thinking differently about the farmers behind the figures in our assignments.
Their decisions weren't made in clean lecture halls.
They were made in machinery sheds, at kitchen tables, and sometimes in the cab of an old pickup parked outside a bank.
A number on a page could tell you how much money someone owed.
It couldn't tell you how many nights that person had spent worrying about paying it back.
That was something I understood better after the morning Brittany had judged Grandpa.
I also started thinking about how quickly I had judged her in return.
I still believed what she did was wrong.
I didn't change my mind about that.
But I began to see that anger could become another way of refusing to understand someone.
I had wanted her to be embarrassed because she had embarrassed Grandpa.
I had wanted her to lose the job because she had used it to make him feel small.
Those feelings were honest.
They weren't necessarily useful.
Grandpa had shown me a different response.
He hadn't denied what happened.
He hadn't told Brittany that her behavior was acceptable.
He had simply refused to let her worst moment become the only thing he saw in her.
That was harder than I had realized.
A few months later, I visited the bank to ask about an agricultural lending program.
I was still a student, and I wasn't applying for a loan myself.
I wanted to understand how the bank evaluated financing for equipment and improvements to farmland.
Brittany happened to be available.
She invited me into a small meeting room and brought out several documents that explained the process.
She answered my questions carefully.
When she wasn't sure about something, she said so and offered to check with a more experienced loan officer.
I noticed the difference immediately.
The young woman who had once tried to hide her uncertainty now seemed comfortable admitting it.
She wasn't careless.
She was careful in a better way.
Before I left, I asked how she had ended up working in agricultural lending.
She smiled.
“Your grandfather had something to do with it.”
I shook my head.
“He'd be surprised to hear that.”
“I think he surprises people all the time.”
She told me that visiting farms had changed her understanding of the work.
She liked seeing the land people described in their applications.
She liked learning why a piece of equipment mattered or why a drainage problem could make a difference to an entire season.
She also liked being able to explain the bank's decisions without making people feel that they had to apologize for needing help.
“I can't approve everything,” she said. “I have to be honest about that.”
“Of course.”
“But I can make sure people understand what's happening. And I can make sure I've listened before deciding what the problem is.”
I thought about the gray carpet.
The white counter.
The hand Rick had moved toward his belt.
Then I thought about the red rag Grandpa had handed Brittany in the machinery shed.
It was a small thing.
But she had been given a chance to do something with her hands instead of standing there trying to defend herself with words.
She had learned to listen by having to follow instructions.
She had learned that not knowing something wasn't a reason to pretend.
And she had learned that a person could be wrong without being beyond repair.
I left the bank with a better understanding of agricultural lending.
I also left with a better understanding of my grandfather.
He had never sat me down to explain how I should treat people.
He hadn't given me a lecture about humility or forgiveness.
He had shown me what those things looked like by the way he lived.
I just hadn't been paying attention.
Source: kaylestore.net
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: When Tom Prepared to Leave the Bank, He Wanted the Town to Remember More Than the Man Who Had Put His Land at Risk
My Grandfather Only Wanted Two Thousand Dollars, but the Way They Looked at His Muddy Boots Changed Everything I Believed
Part 9 of 12
