Elmer and The Lion

“Did you say there is a lion back there, Grandpa?”

One of my fondest memories of my grandfather, Elmer D. Morrison II, took place when I was about eight years old. My sister Trish and I had been sent from our home in San Francisco to spend a few weeks of our summer with our maternal grandparents, Elmer and Jessica Morrison, in Denver, Colorado. We had visited Grandpa and Nana before, but this was the first time Trish and I had stayed with them without our parents.

Grandpa had spent most of his adult life working on the railroad as a chair car attendant.

By the time I knew him, he was nearing the end of that career. He never talked to me about those years. Not once. He never told me stories about the passengers he served or the things he had experienced. Looking back, I would like to believe that some of the direct bitterness Black railroad workers had endured for so much of the twentieth century had begun to change form by then. Whether it had or not, Grandpa never said.

The only times I ever really saw Grandpa come so completely out of his usual gentleness were when he believed my grandmother was being rushed or mistreated. If my mother hurried Nana while they were shopping at the mall, something in him would tighten in the same way.

He never explained it.

He never spoke grandly about how much he loved his wife.

He did not have to.

Grandpa was a fierce, gentle man who loved her completely.

But most of the Grandpa I knew was laughter.

That summer in Denver was hot, and I was perfectly content spending my days on Grandpa and Nana’s front lawn. To my eight year old eyes, it seemed as large as two football fields. Their home sat on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Oneida, a busy intersection, but that lawn felt like the safest place in the world.

My younger cousin Michael lived in Denver and spent much more time with Nana and Grandpa than I ever did. During my visit, he often joined me, and together we turned that yard into whatever our imaginations required that day. It could be a baseball field, a jungle, a battlefield, or another planet.

Most days, Grandpa sat on the porch watching us. Sometimes he trimmed the hedges or watered the grass. Sometimes he simply sat with a glass of lemonade, smiling as he watched the traffic pass.

At night, after Nana had put me to bed, Grandpa would quietly come to my room, and Michael's if he was spending the night.

“Come on, brother,” he would whisper.

We would slip back outside and sit together on the front stoop. Across the street, the older boys would race one another on foot along the sidewalk beside the moving cars. They would line up, take off running, and fly down the block as fast as lightning.

Grandpa and I watched them from the porch as though we had been given front row seats to the greatest race in the world.

“Do not tell your Nana,” he would say with a grin.

I never did.

That front porch became the center of my universe.

Looking back now, I think Grandpa loved that lawn almost as much as he loved having his grandchildren on it. He watered it, edged it, trimmed it, and admired it with quiet satisfaction. It was where he laughed, where he watched us become ourselves, and where he seemed most at peace.

He never spoke to me about his work on the railroad. He never told me what those years had required of him or what they may have taken from him. But he delighted in knowing his grandchildren. He delighted in jokes, in stories, and in the great big lawn he loved.

Most of the time, Michael and I roamed that yard for hours without a care in the world.

Except near the fence.

A narrow alley separated Grandpa and Nana’s property from the yard next door, where a man named Mr. John lived.

One afternoon, Grandpa noticed me wandering toward the back fence, trying to see what was behind it.

“Hakim,” he called, “stay away from Mr. John’s yard.”

“I just wanted to say hello to Mr. John.”

His expression changed.

“Come here a minute.”

I walked back to the porch and climbed up beside him.

He leaned toward me.

“Now, do not tell your Nana what I am about to tell you.”

He glanced over his shoulder toward the large picture window to make sure she was not watching.

“She spends a lot of time in the backyard,” he whispered. “I do not want her getting scared. Next thing you know, she will want us to move, and I am happy right where I am.

If your Nana gets that idea in her head, I will be in big trouble, brother.”

I moved a little closer.

Grandpa had already given me two irresistible gifts.

A secret.

And the knowledge that even Nana did not know it.

“What is it, Grandpa?”

He lowered his voice again.

“Mr. John has himself a lion.”

I stared at him.

“A real lion?”

“Real as you sitting here.”

“You have seen it?”

“Seen it?” Grandpa said. “Boy, that lion jumped clean on top of me one day.”

My eyes grew wide.

“I went back there when Mr. John was out of town. I think he was just playing, but he jumped right on me and broke several of my fingers.”

He held up both hands.

“See these crooked fingers? I had to go to the hospital.”

I examined every finger carefully.

There was the proof.

“So there really is a lion back there?”

“There surely is.”

“But why does Mr. John have a lion?”

Grandpa shrugged.

“He has been back there almost ten years. I promised Mr. John I would never tell a soul.

The zoo would come get him. Mr. John could go to jail. And Lord only knows what would happen to that poor lion.”

Then he looked me directly in the eyes.

“So I am counting on you, Hakim.”

“To do what?”

“Help me keep the secret.”

I felt myself sit a little taller.

For the first time in my life, I did not feel like just a little boy.

I felt like someone Grandpa trusted.

“I will not tell anybody.”

“I know you will not.”

“And do not go near that fence.”

“I will not.”

I meant every word.

For the rest of that summer, I had the time of my life, but I never forgot about the Lion.

Whenever Michael and I ran near the alley, I steered us away.

Whenever I looked out the back window, I searched for the flick of a tail, the flash of a golden mane, or movement in the bushes.

Coming or going, playing or resting, I remained alert.

The Lion was always somewhere just beyond that fence.

Even if I never saw him.

After a few weeks, Trish and I returned home to San Francisco. Michael remained in Denver, where he continued growing up near Nana and Grandpa. I carried the story of the Lion home with me and believed it belonged only to Grandpa and me.

Years passed.

Our family eventually moved from California to Georgia. I grew older, went to college, became a lawyer, and built a life of my own. Still, somewhere inside me, the Lion remained behind that fence in Denver. (If you look closely at the picture of Nana and Granpa'a front yard, you might catch a glimpse of it.)

I was well into my twenties when I returned to Denver to say goodbye to Grandpa.

Nana had been in Atlanta helping our family prepare for Trish’s wedding when we received the news. Grandpa had been outside tending the lawn he loved when his heart gave out.

He died in the place where I remembered him most.

One evening after his service, I sat with Nana on the porch. I thought about that summer and the secret I had protected for so many years.

With Grandpa gone, and Nana no longer spending her days working in the backyard, I decided it was finally safe to break the code of silence.

“Nana, whatever happened to the lion Mr. John used to keep in his backyard?”

She turned and looked at me.

“What lion?”

“The lion next door. Did Grandpa ever tell you about it?”

She studied my face for a moment and then began to smile.

“Did your grandfather tell you there was a lion back there?”

“Yes.”

Nana shook her head and laughed softly.

“Oh, Mr. Morrison.”

“So there was not a lion?”

“No, Hakim. There was never any lion. Your grandfather made that story up to keep you children from wandering away from the yard when he went inside.”

I heard what she said with my adult ears, but for some reason my first response was to look toward the fence as though some part of me still expected to see a golden mane rise above it.

“But he showed me his fingers.”

Nana laughed again.

“He had those crooked fingers long before you came to Denver.”

I sat there stunned.

For nearly two decades, I had carried that story as truth.

Grandpa had completely fooled me.

Still, even after I learned the truth, I continued to think of the Lion as something private between the two of us. I believed he had invented it especially for me during those few weeks I spent in Denver.

Only recently, after I reduced the memory to writing and shared it with my family, did I learn that the story had traveled farther than I knew.

My cousin Michael told me that Grandpa had also told him about the Lion.

“He told you too?” I asked.

“Yes,” Michael said. “I thought it was my story.”

Michael had heard the story separately, sometime after I returned to San Francisco. He had spent much more of his childhood in Denver, but until he read my written version, neither of us knew that the other had been entrusted with the same secret.

Each of us had believed Grandpa created the Lion for him alone.

We had carried the same memory through different childhoods and across different years, never knowing it belonged to both of us.

But the discovery did not make my memory feel less special.

It made me understand Grandpa more fully.

The Lion was not only my story.

It was not only Michael’s story.

It was Grandpa’s story.

It was part of the way he knew children.

Grandpa and I spent more time together after that summer. He was my grandfather, but he was also my great friend. Until the day he died, I felt drawn to him more than almost anyone outside my immediate family.

He seemed to understand me.

I was a shy child. If Grandpa had simply warned me not to go near Mr. John’s yard, I might have become so worried about disappointing him that I would have been afraid to play outside at all.

So he gave me a story instead.

He gave me danger without making me feel unsafe. He gave me responsibility without making me feel ashamed. He gave me a secret that made me feel older, trusted, and important.

He gave Michael the same gift.

That was who Grandpa was.

He never spoke to me about his work on the railroad. He never told me what those years had required of him, what they had taken from him, or what he had been forced to swallow in silence.

I saw only pieces of it.

I saw it in the fire that came into his eyes when the little white woman stepped in front of him at the smorgasbord restaurant as though he were not there.

I saw it in the way he became fiercely protective whenever he thought Nana was being rushed or mistreated.

But he never sat me down and explained those parts of himself.

Most of the Grandpa I knew was laughter.

He loved jokes.

He loved his grandchildren.

He loved sitting on the porch and watching the world pass.

He loved his great big lawn.

He loved Nana completely.

And he understood that children do not always remember the rules adults give them, but they remember the stories adults invite them into.

When I think about the Lion now, I do not think first about how completely Grandpa fooled me.

I think about how closely he must have been paying attention.

He paid attention not only to what I thought about the world, but to how I thought about it. He knew how to reach the imagination of the quiet little boy sitting beside him on the porch. He knew how to guide me without frightening me or crushing my spirit.

I still wonder what he saw in me that allowed him to know exactly how to make me feel comfortable in my own skin.

Perhaps that was his greatest gift.

He made each of us feel seen.

He made each of us feel trusted.

He made each of us believe the Lion belonged to us alone.

That is what wisdom is.

It is knowing when to use truth and when to use story. It is knowing how to guide someone without making them smaller. It is knowing how to love another person exactly as he is.

Grandpa guided me with gentle hands, a humble spirit, and wild tales.

That is the wisdom I carry forward now.

The wisdom of my heart.

And today, whenever I find myself trying to reach Asa's heart, instead of merely winning her mind, I realize I am still sitting beside Grandpa on that porch, listening for a Lion that was never there. (And if you look closely in the last photo, you may see the Lion peeking it's head over the fence of the next door neighbor's yard.)